The Deep, Dark Secrets of Shadra
by GeorgieSusoWasSuarez
Summary: Arsenic Suarez is a clumsy, imperfect and socially awkward teenage girl at a school for graceful, perfect and genius magicians. After her teacher goes missing, Arsenic finds herself on a quest to rescue her. But when the aforementioned quest leads her to a dark place, it is revealed that even the most boring of girls can have secrets too.
1. In which our story begins

A/N: My Magically Weird Oneshots series is pretty diabolical but I'm going to carry it on anyway. For now, I'm going to do my version of the game. My heroine is called Arsenic Suarez and is Pico's adoptive sister (all will be explained later on) and the hero is Hyde Hamilton. Hyde was blond hair and light blue eyes and Arsenic has brown hair and eyes.

**I DO NOT OWN MAGICAL STARSIGN BECAUSE THE WORLD IS CRUEL AND UNFAIR THAT WAY!**

I sat on the desk, swinging my legs. The day had got off to a boring start and I guessed the whole day would end up that way. After all, Miss Madeline was late (again!), my brother Pico was getting stressed (again) and my best friend Sorbet was trying to calm him down but failing (you guessed it, again).

"Arsenic! Miss Madeline hasn't arrived yet. Do you reckon something happened to her?" Pico yelled. I bit my knuckles and shrugged.

"Pico. She's late all the time so…I'd guess she's probably late. Do you agree, Sorbet?"

She nodded.

"Yeah. She's probably just late. It happens all the time. Stop being such a hothead."

They went into a conversation about Miss Madeline with Mokka and Chai, our other friends. I turned around and saw Hyde. He was smiling at me in an odd way.

"Is that desk comfy?" he asked.

"Erm…" I started. Hyde was probably joking but just to be sure I answered anyway. "It's alright, I suppose. As desks go."

He let out a small laugh. He was probably coming up with a clever reply.

"She's coming! Miss Madeline is coming! Everyone get back in your seats!" came the shrill voice of Lassi. She was another good friend and someone else I shared my dorm with. Lassi was a rabbit-morph girl who was also a wind mage. Which suited her personality to a T. She was always dizzy and scatterbrained.

A small commotion ensued, as there was a small rush to seats. I sort of slid off the desk and landed into my chair with a bump. I hoped it looked attractive but from the looks Hyde was giving me I suppose not. He kicked my chair as he took his seat behind me. Chai moved and sat to my left, a shy salamander, and Pico to my right. The door swung over with a **SMACK **and Miss Madeline burst in.

"Hello, students! I do apologise for my lateness. I'm sure you were studying your spell books whilst I was gone, weren't you?" she smiled. Everyone started making noise in agreement. Truth be told, I hadn't seen my spell books for ages. I lost them all when I barricaded the windows with them for that tornado last year.

"Miss Madeline. You are aware that you're late. AGAIN." Mokka, a very sarcastic robot, complained.

"Yeah, what's up with that?" Pico joined in. "You're late all the time but when I'm late with my homework, who gets detention? ME! That's who! If I get held back this year, I'm holding you personally responsible!"

Miss Madeline looked rather taken-aback. She probably hadn't expected such a sound argument from, what can only be called, the class dunce.

"I'm sorry, children. I'd never be late again. I promise! A ha ha ha ha ha!" she laughed.

She seemed to look straight at me when she said this.

I don't know why she was looking at me. I hadn't done anything.

Later that day, Pico, Hyde, Sorbet, Chai and I left potions. We'd been kept back for a while because of our test results.

Hyde, Sorbet and Chai had gotten amazing results that made Professor Pistachio nearly wee himself in excitement. They'd been the only people in the class to get over 95% in the class.

Pico and I had been held back for an entirely different reason. Apparently, we'd been the only people ever to get lower than 10%. Professor Pistachio said at least I'd tried. Pico had just put two for every question. Pico was in detention. And I had to redo the test.

"Cheer up, Arsenic." Chai urged.

"Why? I have to redo this test. It was hard enough the first time. It's all right for you three. You can do well in tests without even reading the questions." I complained.

"Yeah!" agreed Pico. I looked at him in annoyance.

"What are you on about?" I frowned. "You didn't even try."

There was a moment of awkward of silence as we walked to the canteen. We got to the bottom of the stairs and walked a couple of steps.

Sorbet frowned.

"What are Mokka and Lassi doing?" she said, pointing at them. I looked over to see the two of them clustered around the staff room door.

We walked over.

"What are you doing?" asked Chai. There was no reply.

"Guys?" frowned Hyde.

"Hm. I wonder what they're talking about." pondered Lassi.

We obviously still looked clueless so Mokka explained.

"We think Miss Madeline could be getting fired."

Before we could respond, Lassi jumped up and crashed, head first, into the door.

"POWERJUMP!" she screamed.

We all watched in amazement as she flew into the door and sped into the staff room. We watched in silence as this scene unfolded. Then, we all let out a shriek. Everyone, except for me, ran into the staff room. I figured I'd gotten into enough trouble already today. I'd started to sneak off when Hyde and Pico came out, grabbed me and pulled me back. Great. This was just what I needed. Agnes, Pico and I's mum, would kill me. I had been sent here to sort out my behaviour. But, to be fair to me, Pico was much worse than me. I normally got involved in all Pico's little schemes because Pico made me.

And it appeared that had happened again. Only it was more Lassi's scheme. And it wasn't really a scheme. Ok, it wasn't anything like it was back on Razen.

"Children in the staff room? Oh, no. Can't have that." Principle Biscotti exclaimed.

"Teacher! We were listening at the door! We heard everything you discussed!"

"Erm…Mokka. You mean YOU were listening at the door. We're just innocent bystanders. Apart from Lassi."

"You have to go to Puffoon and fight pirates and evil wizards? That's HIGHLY alarming." He carried on, regardless of my input. He was probably just ignoring me.

Whoa. Who said anything about pirates or evil wizards? I knew Puffoon was the wind planet but I was clueless about the rest of what he said.

"Children!" Miss Madeline gasped. "This conversation was not meant for your inquisitive ears."

"Teacher...all that talk of other planets…are you honestly planning on going into space?" Sorbet asked, looking scared yet heart-broken. Really, she's so wet sometimes. I guess that's ironic because she's a water mage but it still doesn't cease to annoy me.

"Students, I will be fine! You should be more worried about your tome reports! They're due next week." Miss Madeline reminded us.

I hadn't even started yet.

I sat in the canteen with Lassi, Pico, Mokka, Chai and Sorbet. No one had said anything, which was odd for us. We never shut up, usually. I sighed and looked despondently at my mashed potatoes. It wasn't the mashed potatoes fault Miss Madeline had to go and fight pirates and evil wizards on the wind planet. But I needed something to look despondently at and the mashed potatoes weren't complaining as much as Mrs Pasta, the dinner lady, did.

Plus, I didn't really like mashed potatoes. Or the spicy fish that came with it…

Why did I order this?

The silence was driving me crazy so I reached into my bag and pulled out a Tupperware box along with the paper for my report. I opened the box and there was Boggart, my pet toad, looking up at me with bright yellow eyes. I smiled and stroked him with my index finger. He'd been my pet ever since I rescued him from a hawk, six months ago. He got lonely by himself in the dorm so I kept him in my school bag along with my other belongings. I put the box back on the table and worked on my report.

I'd just gotten to the part about how its explanations on astrology were awful, when someone bum-nudged me. I went sprawling over Pico, who gave me a worried look, and I looked over to see Hyde copying my tome report.

"Oi!" I yelled and I kicked him over. "That's MY report and I have actually done quite well, if I do say so myself, so get off!" I sat back up to see Hyde get off the floor, quite dazed, and draw a pornographic sketch on the paragraph about affinities. I gasped and picked up a handful of potato. "You ruined the only work I've actually done right, so have potato for hair!" I shouted and I dropped the potato all over his blond spikes.

Lassi groaned. "Oh, Arsenic…"

Sensing a whinge, I flicked the rest in her direction. It landed on her face with a satisfying **splat**. Sorbet dodged the missile and bit her lip to control her laughter.

"Anyways," Hyde said, not even trying to get rid of the offending potato that was dripping onto his nose. "Miss Madeline wants to see us in the meditation room. She says it's pretty urgent."

"What could it be about?" pondered Chai.

"Probably that meeting this morning. We did sort of gatecrash it." Mokka frowned.

"We?! We?! I think you'll find, Mokka, that was YOU and Mrs. Potato-Head over there." I frowned, gesturing in Lassi's direction. "Well…more Lassi than anyone else."

She scowled at me. I simply beamed at her.

"Anyway, let's go." Hyde sighed. We got up and walked out. The red, wooden door loomed above us. Pico opened it with a grunt and we stepped inside.


	2. In which the class learns magic

Sorry that I can't bold the authors notes anymore. I use my phone and I have to bold it letter by letter which is exhausting. So I'm not doing that anymore. I'll just put a line of stars.

We stepped inside the chilly meditation room. Miss Madeline was sat on the wooden stage, silently.

"This is really weird. Miss Madeline has never called us all together before." Probably because she knew we'd cause shenanigans. "I wonder what she wants."

Everyone thought and suddenly Lassi's face lit up.

"You know what I think? I think it's cos of something Pico did."

We all turned around and cast accusatory glares at Pico. It's obvious he wasn't really paying attention and held more interest in the bird outside.

"What?" then he saw our faces and realised we were probably blaming him for something again. "Hey! You can't prove anything! I mean, I didn't do anything."

If Pico was ever in court, which was inevitable really, there would be no need for a prosecutor. He'd get himself convicted in no time. And possibly some people in the jury.

"Arsenic, why don't you see what Miss Madeline wants?" Sorbet suggested.

"Er…no, ta. I think I'll just stay-"

"Yeah, Arsenic. Go as her!" Mokka yelled at me.

"But-" I swung my head to Pico and Lassi to see of they were going to help. They were bickering as usual. "But-" I repeated looking at Hyde for help. He just gave me a little head gesture to the direction of our comatose teacher. "Aw."

I finally gave in and went up to Miss Madeline. I didn't really like her. Everyone else did so I just said I did. It wasn't that I followed tradition (my Christmases here at Will-o'-Wisp were great because they were nothing like Christmas was supposed to like). It was just that seeing as I was the only dark mage in the whole school and I had a name like 'Arsenic' I needed to not draw attention to myself. So by pretending to like Miss Madeline, people wouldn't think I was any weirder than people thought I was. It wasn't like Miss Madeline was cruel but she kept giving me these weird looks - as if she knew something that I didn't. Which was actually very likely because she's very clever and I'm very not.

"Miss Madeline?" I whispered. "We're all here- Miss Madeline!" She still did nothing so I spoke in sillier voices to make the whole thing more fun for me. "Miss Madeline! M! A! D! E! L! I! N! E!"

By the end of it all, I was practically screaming in her earhole with my friends in the background, shaking their heads in embarrassment. Not that I could blame them. If Pico was as socially inept as I was, I'd probably disown him. I'm surprised Pico hasn't done the same to me.

Suddenly, as I stopped yelling so I could breath, Miss Madeline's eyes flew open and she was smiling at me.

"I'm sorry! Were you calling me, Arsenic?" she asked me.

I simply nodded and watched as my friends walked up to me. Hyde slapped me on the back as I choked from sheer lack of breath.

Harder than necessary, though.

"Why are we here?" demanded Sorbet.

Probably something to do with that meeting we completely gatecrashed this morning.

"The universe can be a very dodgy place." Miss Madeline told us. "But this isn't your standard spell flinging so listen well! This is designed for extreme circumstances."

Pico muttered something beside me.

"Arsenic! Step forward!" she barked.

"What? As a demonstration? No!"

She simply smiled at me and gave me another one of those 'Ha ha! I know something that you don't!' type look. I frowned at her and reluctantly stepped onto the stage.

"Riiiiiight, ok!" she drawled. "This is a lesson about attack and defence."

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. A tiny beige person with little orange features. It was giving me one of Miss Madeline's looks. Only this one read 'I know something you don't and that thing is that you're probably about to die.'

"Now, Arsenic! Kick the dummy." Miss Madeline commanded.

Wait. That thing with the evil face was what I was meant to be kicking? Oh no. Well, might as well…

I ran up to the dummy, swung back my leg and- SMASH!

Miss Madeline ducked as a shower of broken glass shards rained down on her. I leapt out of the way. There was silence in the meditation room. Apart from a few chuckled from Lassi.

"Just in case anyone thought I was," I broke the silence. "I am not paying for that."

"Yes, you are Arsenic. Yes you are." she whispered.

After a few lessons, all of which were slightly tedious, Miss Madeline smiled at us proudly. I couldn't see why. After she chose Hyde and I to lead more demonstrations, the meditation room was in tatters. Everyone started to leave as we were all, to put it lightly, knackered.

"Arsenic, you're cooking." Sorbet yawned.

"I am agog with excitement." I replied but as I reached the door, I felt a pull on my sleeve.

Miss Madeline had a firm grip on my black jumper. I didn't question it or try to pull away. I just stood there, wondering who was going to talk first.

It was Miss Madeline.

"You were quite fierce out there." she smiled, letting go of my sleeve. I really did not like that smile. It seemed dark and sinister like the smile of an axe murderer before he was about to plunge an axe into your face.

"Really?" I replied in a monotone voice. It may have been a question but the way Miss Madeline's eyes were fixated on mine, I could of sworn she took it as a challenge.

"Yes, really. You have the fighting style of a wolf."

I froze. I didn't blink, I didn't twitch, I didn't breathe. My feet cemented themselves to the floor. I just stared into her pink eyes, like I was trying to read them. I didn't have to. The knowing smirk on her face said it all.

"Well," I replied, shaking myself free of her grip. "Isn't that interesting?"

"Quite."

My arm flopped to my side as she finally let go. We stood there for a few more seconds, just looking into each others eyes like she wolves would. The second I thought that, a chill went up my spine. She finally gave in and looked away. I walked away, my head still locked in her direction. I opened the door and stepped out. I breathed a sigh of relief that the whole thing was over with.

"What was all that about?" a voice said to me.

I froze again and turned around to see Hyde, leaning against the wall.

"I don't know…what did you hear?"

"Some stuff about wolves," he shrugged. "Then you went into some sort of deadly stare-off."

I breathed out and looked him in the eye. Could I trust him? Could I trust him with the biggest secret I had?

"You look pretty shaken up. What was all that about wolves anyway?"

"I don't even know." I smiled.

"Yeah it seemed a bit random. And she's probably stretched your jumper." Hyde frowned, pulling on the sleeve.

"Shame. It's my favourite jumper."

It was too. I'd had it since I could remember and it was all black and sparkly. Plus it went well with my black jeans that, according to Hyde, made my butt look fantastic.

More silence as we walked out of the school and towards the dorm. I thought the school was very badly designed because it meant that we had to go outside at night to get to our rooms. Everyone else was fine with it but I was always on edge; it was always running through my mind about how I could be attacked.

"I miss my parents." Hyde said suddenly.

It was like he knew exactly what Miss Madeline was referring to. Up until I was ten, I lived alone on Shadra. Just me alone. Well, sort of. There was a pack of wolves on Shadra that always looked out for me. They would always bring me food or protect me from various beasts. It was like they thought I was a queen or someone equally important. They always protected me, like they felt a need for me to survive.I remembered them vividly. Black shining fur, glistening purple eyes, teeth like razors and claws to match. In the winter, we would curl up in the cave and I would drift away their musky scent filling my nose. Then one day, they led me out of the cave. I didn't know what was going on; I just followed. A man was stood there with a huge ship. As I stood there, the wolves melted away into the darkness. The man turned. This was Ember Suarez, Pico's father. A grin on his face, he greeted me and asked my name. When he realised that I couldn't talk, he grew worried. Ember took me home with him and I became Arsenic Suarez. Arsenic might not even be my real name. It was just a name Agnes chose for me.

"Arsenic?" Hyde said.

"Oh, sorry. I was thinking."

"Well, stop before you hurt yourself." he joked.

"You were saying? About your parents?"

"They died when I was eight. A man was drink driving and plowed right into them." he sighed. "I had to live with my Aunty Pam."

"Oh. What was she like?"

"Aunty Pam? Odd. When she had to enter her name on documents, she'd put 'Aunty' as her first name and 'Pam as her second one. On special occasions, you'd always get a fiver in a card. Birthday, Christmas, Easter, Valentines-"

"You got Valentines of your Aunty Pam?" I laughed.

"Along with all my others!" he glared at me but he shook his head and laughed. "Good old Aunty Pam."

"Good old Aunty Pam." I repeated.

"She used to go into the small villages like Honey Mint to try to find a husband. And I wish that was a joke. She said she wanted a husband who wouldn't mind if she locked him outside in the garden for a week because "he'd make a bivouac" apparently."

"Did she find one?" I asked, genuinely interested.

"Nope. Probably due to her mass stereo-typing." he smiled.

We came to the dorm room.

"Bye." I smiled, hurrying to leap into bed, snuggle up and pretend the whole weirdness thing with Miss Madeline never happened.

"Hold up." Hyde frowned at me. "What is with you and Miss Madeline? I get the feeling that you're fighting for the same things, but you're still fighting against one another."

"That's because we are, Hyde." I sighed. "That's because we are."

So there we go. Please point out any errors I made via review! Also, I took down my Halloween story because by the time I could be bothered to update, it wasn't Halloween anymore.

But anyway thanks for reading and bless your face. If you sneezed during this fic, bless you. Peace off!


	3. In which there's awkwardness and facts

I GOT ANOTHER REVIEW :,D ! I was so happy because no one ever reviews this fic and NOW SOMEONE HAS! Apart from SheepPenguin244 but she smells :P. Also, this is a bit long!

* * *

I felt weird after I shut the door. A million different scenes all rushed into my head. They all started the same: me and Hyde talking about his parents, I tell him my secret and he stares at me in shock.

There were different endings after that. In one, he hugged me and told me he loved me. In another, he ran away. In another, he killed me with a comically oversized pair of scissors. Finally, he told everyone and they all shunned me and I had to live in a field for ten years until I somehow contracted mad-cow disease and died.

Shaking my head from the pure randomness of all those thoughts, I switched on the lights. I looked down to see Lassi asleep on the sofa, exhausted after our magic lesson today. I guessed Sorbet was asleep too. They'd probably never used magic like that before. No one wonder they were shattered. I'd already used it before so it didn't really tire me out.

Secretly, using magic like that had mad me feel so…alive. After leaving Shadra with Ember, I never had to fight again. Well, not for my life anyway. Today, I was taken back to the time when I was a scruffy ten year old girl, using dark magic to fend off monsters with a gang of wolves.

I wish I could be that girl again.

She was so carefree. She had dark muck all over her face and was dressed in black rags because she didn't feel the need to prove herself to anyone. She did what made her happy, without caring how much of an idiot she looked.

It was probably growing up like that which made me into the accident-prone embarrassment I was today. The accident prone embarrassment with a toad in her bag, a massive hole in her jeans and a scar on her arm from when she whipped herself with a skipping rope. By accident of course.

I sighed and sort of sunk onto the floor in mild depression. I felt like I'd failed the girl I used to be. Now, I spent two hours doing my hair and make-up every morning trying to impress people who accuse me of being a witch.

I used to dream of actually being a witch so I could turn them all into toads. Like Boggart. He didn't criticise me. He just sort of accepted my odd quirks and left it at that. Then I realised if I wanted to be a witch I'd have to have a massive nose and warts. Which wasn't really an option. I just wanted to be accepted.

I suppose Hyde accepted me. Well, accepted me as much as anyone could. I always stuck out of a crowd like a sore thumb.

The weird girl with the skin that's darker than her hair, black eyes, weird butterfly necklace and the black clothes. And, nine times out of ten, I was the one who had just fallen over.

I hated how I looked. I wanted to change everything. I wanted my dark hair back. Like it used to be before Agnes dyed it a mouse-y blonde-brown out of shame of having a witch for a daughter. I wasn't even a witch! I was just a dark starsign girl who had never done anything to hurt anyone. Well, nothing that could hurt them for a while. And nothing that wasn't by accident.

I wondered what to do. Should I dye my hair, change my clothes and be a care-free dark mage? Or be a mouse-y ghost girl forever?

I knew what I had to do. But I'd need help. If I was left to do it by myself, I'd do something wrong and look more like of a mess than I did before.

But no-one would understand how I felt. Well…apart from one person.

Before I realised I was even moving, I was running down the halls, arms swinging around like a windmill. Yes, that is how I run. It was actually the sole reason why I don't run. I tried to stop but if I didn't do the windmill, my legs would go all gangly like a baby giraffe and I'd topple over. I reached the boy's dorm.

"Hyde! Hyde! Hyde!" I shouted, through the door.

He opened it after what seemed like forever. His normally spiked hair was sort of messy but it still looked publicly acceptable. His white trainers were untied. He had a white t-shirt on and a pair of grey shorts.

"Arsenic? What is it? I was trying to- WOAH!" He was cut of be me grabbing him by the arm (which is quite muscly, it had to be said) and matching him down the corridor. "What's going on?"

I turned around and gave him what I hoped was a pleading look.

"I need help."

"That's not exactly news, Arsenic."

"I need to be me again!" I shouted at him. I was making this all too dramatic but it meant that much to me, I couldn't help but treat it as a big thing.

We eventually got back to the dorm. I locked the door and pushed him into the bathroom.

When I shut the bathroom door, I turned around and my arm was grabbed by Hyde.

"What's going on?! Why did you just kidnap me from my room and march me over here?! Are you in trouble? What're you-"

He stopped when he saw my face. I must have looked pretty emotional or terrified because he pulled me into a hug. I used this time to look in the mirror to see what I looked like.

Tears. There were tears in my goddamn eyes. Why? I must have looked so small and pathetic and weak and stupid. I didn't mind looking like that to other people but not Hyde. Out of all the people to see me cry, I'd have never wanted it to be him.

"Arsenic?" He whispered, quieter now. "What's up?"

I sat on the floor, cross-legged. He sat opposite me. I told him. I told him all about the wolves and how I longed to be like that again, minus the homelessness.

I didn't tell him my biggest secret though. I could trust Hyde. I knew I could. But I couldn't trust myself. If I told anyone, it would be real. At least if it was an untold secret, I could pretend it wasn't there and it wasn't true. Like a big whopping elephant in the corner of my mind that no one else even suspected. I couldn't ignore it forever though. But I suppose it could go unnoticed for now.

I must have been deep in thought because the only thing that dragged me out of the confused jumble of my secrets was Hyde grabbing my hand. He stared into be eyes with his diamond blue ones.

I loved his eyes. They were big and silver-y blue and had so much kindness and wisdom in them. Mine were actually brown but were so dark, they might as well have been black. They must look so evil compared to his. I shut my eyes and looked away. He was probably looking into my eyes wondering how many babies I'd eaten today or something equally as sinister.

"I'll help you." He said, flicking his golden hair out of his face. "I shall make you look even more beautiful than you do now. Which will be hard."

I couldn't help but smile. He made me feel like I was the queen of something the way he went on about me. Like I could do no wrong. I knew, more than most people, that I definitely could.

"Thank you." I whispered.

He pulled me back up and we both stared at my reflection in the mirror. I stared at the glass-me with hate and frustration.

Why couldn't I be like Sorbet? She had her big blue blinkers and her brown hair that went down to her shoulders. She had a perfect figure unlike me. My chest was far bigger than everyone else's and it was still growing. Sorbet was a bit flat-chested, sure, but at least she didn't have fat that moved independently from her body. And she had a small bum. Mine looked like it could eclipse her. She was so small and skinny like if you picked her up she'd snap like a twig. I was tall and it wasn't like I was fat or anything but I did have a little more weight than others.

That was probably the only good thing about me. I wasn't too skinny. People at school were starving themselves to get thin. I'd rather be slightly big than a twiggy slip of a girl.

I looked away from the mirror and turned me head to look at Hyde. He had one hand on my shoulder and the other was stroking my hair. My hair was so long, it went all the way down to my bum. My head was rested by his cheek. It all felt so perfect; I didn't want to even breathe just in case he moved.

We stayed still for minutes. Closely entwined as if we were like jigsaw pieces that were made to fit together. His breath was cold and every time he breathed out it was like he was sighing contently. At least I hoped he was. I'd feel totally embarrassed if I was caught up in some 'this is perfect' twoddle whilst he just wanted to leave.

"Ok." He said after a while. "If we dye your hair right, it should go really dark. Not black but a very dark brown. Also, it should go very shiny and be soft."

"Good." I said because I couldn't think of anything else to say at this point. To be totally honest, I was quite breathless after all the hair-stroking and the closeness.

"If you just bend over the sink," he smiled. I did exactly that and realised just how awkward this was. "I'll start now."

I didn't question why Hyde was so good at hair dying. I just assumed it was something he learned off Aunty Pam. He rubbed the foamy soap stuff into my hair as I nervously hunched over the sink. I couldn't believe how close we'd been so far in this little 'change Arsenic' session. I just hoped there would be more closeness. I really needed to start questioning my feelings for him.

I knew I was attracted to him. But, then again, so was anyone who ever met him. I would probably be able to figure out how much I was attracted to him if I knew how he felt about me. He'd always treated me much more special than the rest of his… harem. And I'd always get dirty looks of three girls who adored the ground Hyde walked on because he and I were so close.

I couldn't tell if we were just friends or more. And I couldn't ask him, out of fear of him not saying the answer I wanted him to say which could possibly lead to a whirlwind of depression, drinking and microwave meals for one. It seemed unlikely but it couldn't hurt to be prepared for such an event.

"We're done." Hyde said from behind me. I turned around to say something but was blinded by the lovely fact he'd taken his top off. He obviously caught me staring (because I was being quite obvious so that even a blind person could tell) because he smiled. "Sorry I didn't say anything about it but I thought it would be best to not get dye on it. Have you got a shirt on under your jumper because we still have to dry it and stuff and we don't want to change its colour?"

I had to think.

"Yeah I do but it's white."

"Would you be uncomfortable if you…you know…stripped off?"

I thought again about when the last time I shaved was.

"No, that'll be fine. It's not like its a stranger. It's you. I don't strip off in front of strangers!"

I realised that when I said that made it sound like I actually stripped off in front of strangers.

I took my jumper off and threw it into a corner. I accidentally knocked over the toilet brush stand when I did so I had to bend down and put it back in which, as anyone could guess, didn't look attractive at all.

I took of my white shirt and put it lazily on the floor to avoid anymore toilet brush fiascos. It was when I saw myself in the mirror that I realised just how naked I practically was now. At least fate had been kind and made me put a nice bra on.

Hyde pretended not to look at my breasts as I turned around to smile at him. I prayed for no more awkward stuff as we went back to my room. Luckily, I'd tidied it last night.

Fate was being so unusually kind today that I was kind of worried as to what awful stuff was lying in wait for me tomorrow. Hyde dried my hair for me as I sat on a small chair awkwardly trying to look as attractive as possible.

"It's gone really dark." He said after a while.

"That's ok. It is what I wanted after all." I replied.

A couple more moments of agonising silence went by. I was so busy staring at Hyde in the mirror, I didn't even notice that my hair was done. Hyde was right. It was very nearly black. But I loved it. It was shiny and soft just as Hyde said it would be. I turned around and smiled.

"Thank you." I hugged him. It was only after then I realised that we were both shirtless but a part of me couldn't care less. He hugged me back so it couldn't have been weird.

We pulled away. Hyde was stroking my hair again.

"It's beautiful." He murmured. He looked at me. "You're beautiful."

I nearly cried in excitement but stopped myself because the amount of weirdness that would be was too much, even for me. I didn't even have time to smile because that rhymed when I noticed we were staring right at each other again.

I didn't even know where it was going…until he kissed me.

It lasted for at least a minute before he pulled away. He looked ashamed, like he'd been caught stealing or something illegal. I guess I had my answer. He did like me in that way but he only just found it out himself.

"I'm sorry." He flapped as he rushed out the room.

"Aghh!" I cried out as I scrambled on my bed looking for a top so I could be decent. I pulled it on as I hopped out of the room. I caught him at the door. "Wait!"

He turned around.

"I don't know what came over me. I don't know why I just…did that."

I gave him a slightly confused look.

"Hyde, you're acting as if you just punched me for no reason. It's fine. Actually," I moved closer to him. "It's more than fine."

Now it was his turn to look confused. I was trying to be seductive but I had an inkling that I was failing miserably.

And we kissed again. I don't know wether it was me or him who started it because I must have blacked out in a whirlwind of drunken happiness that I thought could only be achieved by a box of chocolates, soap operas and a bottle of wine.

When I awoke, Hyde was lying face down on my bed, snoring. To my dark delight, his shirt was still off and he was sound asleep.

Nothing had happened, I knew that. If something did happen, I would know. Especially because I awoke on the floor. I crept up onto the bed, because the floor was unsurprisingly uncomfortable. I looked up to see Lassi stood in the door. Her arms were folded and her eyebrows were raised.

"Hello, Arsenic." She frowned at me.

"Hello." I replied.

We both looked at Hyde and back to each other. She just raised her eyebrows in a way that demanded explanation.

I couldn't give her one.

"…I …dyed my hair?" I told her but the shakiness in my voice made it sound like a question.

"Oh, I didn't even notice. I was far too busy looking at the half-naked male on your bed."

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED!" I suddenly yelled, throwing my face into the duvet. Well, I thought it was the duvet. It was actually the bed frame. "Ow!"

Lassi shook her head at me.

"You didn't do anything. You kissed outside and then went back to your room. Then you kissed again and you both fell asleep. I think he kicked you off the bed though."

"Bastard!" I exclaimed, giving him a boot to the back which sent him sprawling off the bed in return.

"Ow!" His voice went from the floor. He sat up a look of confusion that turned to fear when he saw Lassi. "Oh. Hello Lassi."

"What do you two think you're doing?!" Lassi shouted at us, causing both of us to lean back in fear. "You can't go kissing each other! Now you're going to get feelings for each other and everything will get confusing!"

"What if we already had feeling for each other? I retorted. "We don't need you to tell us what to do. We are responsible-ish. And we know exactly what we're doing. Sort of. Another thing, WHERE DID YOUR SHOE GO?!" I suddenly yelled at Hyde once I realised that he was missing a shoe.

We looked around for his shoe whilst Lassi tutted at us.

"Guys! This isn't about Hyde's missing shoe. What's happening with you two? Are you just going to kiss and leave it at that or…?"

Hyde looked at me.

I looked at Hyde.

"We'll see how we go." Hyde said before leaving. "Bye." He said to Lassi. He turned around and nodded at me.

I felt empty.

Lassi sat down next to me. I noticed she was still in her yellow pajamas.

"What time is it?"

She shrugged.

"It's still early." She sighed. "I know he didn't say what you wanted him to say but…it'll be ok. He'll come around eventually. Just use your allure."

"Lassi," I frowned. "At the moment my allure has deflated like an unhappy balloon. I don't think it's ready for anything."

"Well after it's accomplishment last night, your allure should be feeling rather proud."

We both smiled and laughed. Well, not exactly laugh. We just blew more air out of our noses than usual.

I glared at myself in the mirror. In my white nightdress, I didn't exactly look like a dark mage. But I didn't look like a light mage either which was an improvement. My dark hair looked amazing. I didn't look like a freak anymore.

I dived into my wardrobe and found a black vest top. I couldn't just wear that so I flung it into my bed until I found something else. I found a purple jumper with a black heart. It hung loosely off my shoulders. I put the black vest top under it.

It looked good. Especially because I didn't look like me anymore. I looked like a dark mage that you didn't want to cross. Which was exactly what I wanted.

I didn't find any black shoes but I found some white, heeled high-top trainers with a shiny gold pattern. They made me look taller, which was a bit of a downside, but they completed my look.

I did my make-up and when I was satisfied, I went outside to the school. I got some looks off people but I couldn't care less. I just carried on walking. I couldn't help but notice that I got looks of the guys as well but very different types.

I got to class and my friends' jaws dropped.

"Sis!" Pico exclaimed. "Your hair changed colour! And what happened to your clothes?"

Lassi just nodded, a happy look on her face.

"Wow." Sorbet nodded at me. "You changed. For the better, of course."

I ignored her as that was the best thing to do with her.

Chai just grinned.

"Miss Madeline will have a fit!"

Hopefully.

Mokka looked to Hyde.

"I take it you did this."

"Very, very nearly." Lassi muttered. I glared at her.

"Gobby, do you want to keep schtum?" I scowled, head-gesturing to Pico. If he knew what had happened, he'd be beating up Hyde for sure.

"Well, I dyed her hair. The clothes were all her." Hyde smiled, checking me out, much to Pico's annoyance.

I looked at Lassi with wide eyes. She just smirked at me.

"Hey, dude, d'wanna stop?!" Pico scowled, pulling him away from me by the scruff of his neck. "That's my sister."

It was then that the door flung open.

"Miss Madeline is early for once!" Chai grinned.

"Pico Suarez, put down that other student immediately." Came a nasally student.

"What the hell happened to her- EURGH!" I shouted, disgusted at what I saw.

Professor Pistachio was stood at Miss Madeline's desk, sorting out some papers and looking horrifyingly comfortable in her spot.

"Sir, this is Miss Madeline's class." Mokka informed him.

"Yeah, get out." I frowned at him.

He scowled back at me.

"Arsenic Suarez, watch your tongue. Honestly you dark mages…always thinking you know better."

That wasn't true. I never knew better than anyone else. Unless it was about toad-care. I unzipped my bag to check on Boggart. He was looking up at me, with big yellow eyes.

"Anyway, Arsenic Suarez, you can redeem yourself. I'll give you a question from my little book of facts and if you get it right, you won't have a detention tonight."

Everyone sniggered at me. I mouthed an obscene phrase back at them and they all turned away.

Professor Pistachio and his little book of facts were the banes of my life. He liked nothing more than spouting them out at any opportunity like an annoying fact fountain. Then he'd sit in his chair and drink lemonade whilst looking smugly at us all. I hope he drinks to much and his fat bum gets stuck there.

"Now, Arsenic Suarez. What is a left-handed lemon?"

This threw me slightly. I was expecting science or history or even maths.

I wasn't even aware lemons had hands.

"I don't know, sir." I frowned at him.

"Aha! I didn't think a simpleton like you would." He smirked at me. I resisted the urge to throw my shoe at him. "It's an orange! A left-handed lemon is an orange."

I really, really could not see how.

"An orange is exactly the same as a lemon but all the molecules are reversed." That wasn't the definition of exactly the same but I shrugged it off. "So, an orange is a left-handed lemon! What do you have to say for yourself?!"

"Do they make scissors for both then?" I asked. I thought it was quite a valid question. He did not think so.

At break, we ran out of the classroom and made straight for Biscotti's office. We didn't listen in first. We just burst in. Along with us, came a barrage of questions like 'Where did Miss Madeline go?', 'Will she be ok?', 'Will she come back?' and 'When will she be home?'

He simply turned away from the window and looked at us sadly.

"I don't know."

He turned back, mournfully.

* * *

Professor Pistachio is actually based on my history teacher. He also drinks lemonade and has a book of facts. And every 'little facts' moment that I add in any of my Magical Starsign stories, has actually happened to me. The left-handed lemon situation actually happened to me.

**Oh the joys.**

~GeorgiexxxSuarez xx


	4. In which there are rockets

Thanks to TurtleFish91 for the review :D it means a lot :) the whole "left-handed lemon" gets a lot worse once you find out that actually happened to me. In front of lots of people. Oh the joys.

I know I only just updated but now I am again. Yay!

* * *

It had been six months since Miss Madeline left. I occasionally asked Principle Biscotti how she was but all I got in reply was the cold shoulder.

Which was very rude because I was only being nice. I don't even like Miss Madeline and couldn't care less about how she was. She could have been made into a pie for all I cared.

Professor Pistachio was still being a complete bitch, using every opportunity to spring facts upon us.

This meant my education suffered because it was rare for me to actually turn up to Necromancy, the subject he taught.

Which was great because who actually wants to talk to the dead about the future?! They're dead, they don't even know what's going on now. Just because they're dead suddenly means they're omnipotent or something.

There'd been no awkwardness between Hyde and I. Which was a surprise because awkwardness was my middle name. He'd helped me with my 'side-project' that I was doing instead of Necromancy.

Finding my parents.

As hard as I'd tried, I couldn't remember my surname. I couldn't even remember my real first name. I'd wrote a letter to Agnes but she told me that I didn't remember it when I got to Razen either. Then Hyde came up with the idea of looking at books of Shadra to find out information.

It was the weirdest and least surprising thing ever. One book. And I was pretty sure it wasn't meant to be there. There were literally hundreds of books for other planets. Hard-backed, fictional and textbooks.

"I knew it." I frowned as I flicked through the library guide. "They do all hate us."

The one remaining book wasn't on the library guide but that didn't stop me pilfering it before some armoured guards came in with guns and flame-throwered us all, just in case the Shadra germs popped up and zapped everyone.

It was leather bound. It had some grey decorations around a square printed picture of a purple sky with a black sun.

"This is where you used to live?! Nasty." Hyde commented.

I looked up at him.

"I can get Chai or Mokka you know. You are not actually a necessity."

He mumbled an apology as I stuffed the book up my jumper and walked out unsuspiciously. But seeing as it was me, there probably was a full sweep to see what books I'd stolen. I was used to it. I was a criminal anywhere I went.

"You can't really say that because you did just steal a book."

"Well," I frowned. "It wasn't on the library's official list so it may not even belong to them. Anyway it's a book about Shadra. They'd have discovered it during their daily 'Arsenic Checks'. Then they would have destroyed it."

"Ok, fair enough."

That night, I read the book whilst Sorbet was moaning and Lassi was eating cheesecake. She kept trying to spoon feed it to me as well, no matter how many times I told her to get off.

So when Chai walked in, looking worried, he came into quite a scene.

Sorbet was crying into her beans on toast because she waved at a boy who didn't wave back or whatever, Lassi and I were covered in strawberry cheesecake and Boggart was stuck on top of a ceiling light.

When Chai pointed this out, I leapt up with a shriek and caught him before he toppled off. Boggart had this strange habit of getting himself stuck in completely random places.

He let out a happy croak when he was cupped back in my hands and proceeded to eat the cheesecake off my shoulder.

"You know, I don't think he's meant to eat cheesecake." Sorbet frowned.

"He's had a very traumatic experience, he can do what he wants." I told her.

Sorbet was about to reply when Chai butted in.

"Anyway, this isn't about Boggart-"

Boggart let out an angry croak as if to say, yes it was all about him. I'd always guessed that Chai and Boggart had some sort of amphibian rivalry.

"Quiet, you." Chai shot back. Boggart went behind my hair in defeat. "So, I think Miss Madeline is in trouble!"

Lassi's eyes widened like saucers.

"You do?"

"Uh huh." Chai nodded. "She said she would be home soon but it's been six months! And Hyde just told me that Biscotti just yelled at him for asking about her."

"That's weird. Biscotti loves Hyde. Hyde is technically a son to him." Sorbet frowned.

It was true. When Hyde's Auntie Pam went missing on one of her husband searches, Biscotti had taken Hyde off the streets and raised him as his own. He adored Hyde and would never snap at him for something so small.

Lassi's eyes somehow got wider. They were the size of flying saucers now,

"But, but, but- We have to get to Puffoon." She said, very seriously.

"Aw, hell naw." I frowned. "There are Auntie Pam thieves there."

"But Miss Madeline-"

"And do you really think," I continued. "That we could survive in space? Us?"

"Yeah." Sorbet agreed. "Arsenic can't even walk in a straight line without falling over."

"I can!" I shouted back. And just to prove it, I walked to the end of the dorm. "Ha!" I walked back cockily. "A straight line has been walked. Let this be a big 'I told you so!' to slap you across the face. I hope you feel awful about yourself and you- AGH!" I tripped over Chai's tail, causing me to face-plant the floor.

"You can't! A straight line has NOT been walked. Let this be a big 'I told you so' to slap you across the face. I hope you feel awful about yourself and you- OW!" Sorbet cried as I threw my shoe at her.

"Pipe it down." I shouted, lifting my head up from the blue carpet. "I did walk a straight line. It was just a small one."

She threw my shoe back and it hit me on the bum.

"Okay." Chai frowned. "I'm going to go…because this has gotten weird."

"This isn't really weird by our standards." Sorbet told him.

"Yeah we have standards." I nodded. Then I realised that Boggart was still on my shoulder. "Oh no! He might have been squished!"

Luckily, he had somehow landed in Lassi's bowl of potpourri so not only was he ok but he smelled nice.

That night, I curled up in bed and carried on reading. I couldn't believe what I read. I was always told that, 14 years ago, Shadra invaded Nova and was defeated. Everyone from Shadra was killed. But in this book, it claimed that Nova invaded Shadra and killed everyone. When everyone on Shadra died, Nova claimed that it was Shadra's fault.

They blamed the Shadra queen, Queen Viande Suso. And since then, everyone hated Shadra.

Two people had blamed by the book for the cover-up. Someone called Lord Lemonias and the Queen of Nova, Queen Georgentine.

I read that Queen Georgentine was dead.

"Good." I spat. I'd never met the woman but I immediately decided I hated her. She'd caused the death of my whole family. Granted, I didn't know them but it was still despicable.

It was then that it hit me.

I was the only Shadran left. I had somehow survived the invasion. I was the only one.

I rolled over, tried not to cry and ended up crying a lot.

The next morning, I was sat in the meditation room with Mokka and Sorbet. I was reading that book again, getting myself good and depressed. Sorbet was sat silently, meditating or something. Mokka was just sort of stood there, awkwardly.

"What is that book anyway?" He said to me after a while.

I looked up.

"It's about Shadra. It actually tells the truth about what happened when everyone on Shadra, bar me, died."

"I wonder who wrote it."

"Probably not someone from Nova if this book is true."

"You've never read like this before. It's a bit unnerving."

"Well it's something that actually relates to me, isn't it?"

"I suppose. It's a shame to hear that you're the last one out there."

"Would you two quieten down please?" Sorbet snapped suddenly. "I am trying to connect with my aura here!"

I pursed my lips in mock-surprised guilt to annoy her. She was about to yell when Chai and Pico burst in. Sorbet's original innocence came back to her face. She was about to greet them when Pico turned to Chai.

"Not here."

The salamander nodded.

"Yep, definitely not here."

"What's up, Pico? Chai? Looking for someone?" She said, batting her cartoon-like eyes.

I tutted from where I was sat on the floor.

"Yeah, we kinda lost Lassi. I don't know what got into her head. She went totally crazy talking about blasting off into space or something- IT WASN'T MY FAUT!" Pico suddenly yelled, probably by instinct. I was partially surprised he didn't blame it on me, like usual.

"Space? Where would she get that idea? … Hey!" Sorbet wondered.

"What? Do you know something?" Pico asked.

"Remember that rumour that the seniors used to tell the freshmen about there being a rocket in the-"

It was at this point that I left. Truth be told, I'd had the same idea and saw no point in me staying. But, due to my politeness, I crawled out so that no one would think I was rude.

"Where are you going?" Mokka hissed at me.

"I'm going to find the rockets but I'm in stealth mode so no one thinks I'm rude and just walking out in the middle of a conversation." I whispered back. It was quite awkward seeing as I was on my hands and knees in the middle of a doorway. Also, a crowd of male students had gathered and were staring at me. Or down my top. Either way.

"Steal mode? You do realise Sorbet trailed off because we were all distracted by you crawling across the floor."

I got off my knees and turned back to the meditation room to see that everyone inside was indeed staring at me with surprise and confusion.

"Sorry about that. Carry on." I instructed with a wave of my had. I continued to crawl until I was out of the door and after it slammed shut, I got up and walked like a normal person.

"Come on, Boggart." I said, getting him out of my bag and cupping him in my hands as I went up the stairs. "We have to find a rocket to take us to the moon."

He croaked at me.

"Well, Puffoon then. When did you graduate from Killjoke University?"

He stayed silent then. I went into the storage room and saw a girl dressed in green with a ridiculously pointed hat.

"Stop! You are permitted to enter the backroom! There is stuff in there that will get you into serious trouble!" She squealed with an annoying high-pitched voice.

I looked from her to the door and back to her.

"And?"

"You will be expelled!" She shook her head as she cried 'expelled', brown hair flying everywhere.

Boggart looked up at me with big blinking eyes.

"And?"

"Er…you…you won't be able to come to this school ever again!"

"Listen I'm a dark mage. I could blast your sorry arse all the way to the earth planet, if I wished." I lied. "Do NOT get in my way or, so help me, I will end you. I'll put you in the microwave, peel your skin off strip by strip and push you in a massive pile of salt. Do I make myself clear?"

In reply, Silly-hat ran to the corner and started crying. I, however, opened the door with a triumphant smile. I popped my head out at the last second.

"Thank you!" I smiled, pleasantly before disappearing.

I got a shock as I went into the storage room.

"Hey, Arsenic." Sorbet smiled.

"How the hell did you get in here before me?" I shouted back.

"Whilst you were threatening to murder Melissa, I snuck past behind you."

"Oh. And I did not threaten to murder her!" I lied again.

"Whatever. Oh, hey Mokka. Arsenic just got here." She smiled. She seemed bent on letting everyone know that she got here first, even though it was MY idea to go to the silly storage closet in the first place.

"I know she did. I just had to console a traumatised Jenny because she thought she was going to be murdered by a crazed dark mage."

"I thought her name was Melissa. And I did NOT threaten to murder her!" I lied for the third time.

"Riiiight. So she's talking about another dark mage, then? Just got confused?" Even though I knew he was being sarcastic, I nodded.

"That is exactly what happened. I feel slightly victimised that everyone would blame me." I sighed, giving everyone the sad eyes.

"Don't give me those bambi eyes, Arsenic! What did you do?"

"You guys!" Sorbet randomly butted in. "We have to find a rocket!"

"Oh, yes. I forgot about that." Mokka replied calmly, like he'd just been reminded about getting milk or something. "Are we going to investigate here?"

"Yeah! Look at that wall, Arsenic. It seems like you'd be able to climb it, huh?"

"Why will I have to climb it?" I frowned, completely looking past her smile.

"Because I have more to live for than you."

"Oh, ta." I scowled at her. "Love you too. I do have things to live for like…that Death in Paradise box set I ordered off eBay and…the new series of Casualty and many other things."

Sorbet's face didn't even change in the slightest.

"Well, fine!" I shouted and I started to climb the wall. When I got up there, I was faced with quite a sight.

There was a massive face on the wall.

After a few minutes of staring I realised it was a door. It had a rather big nose, big lips and a huge curly moustache.

"Oh, the humanity." I managed.

"What's going on up there?!" Sorbet shouted from down below.

"Chill your beans!" I replied down, silencing her. "There's some kind of face-door up here."

"What on earth is a face-door?" Mokka asked.

"It's a door with a face- would you pay attention?! It's in the name!" I shouted back.

Soon, Sorbet came up the ladder and also came to face to face with the door - quite blumming literally.

"Oh. There really is a face-door here." She frowned, as if she never really believed me.

I simply raised my eyes at her and soon Mokka came trundling up behind us.

"So this is that door that you were nearly weeing yourself over."

I was about to ask why he thought that a face-door was just a normal occurrence in life when the aforementioned face-door started to move.

"Who goes there?" It boomed.

I turned around to see that the normally vocal Sorbet was backing away whilst Mokka was abnormally quiet.

"Erm…I do! I go here." I frowned at it.

Old Doorface simply scowled at me.

"Do you seek to open the door to heavens?"

Sorbet shook her head but the door ignored her. I immediately liked this door a lot more.

"Yes. That is exactly why I came here today, thank you for asking."

"What are you doing?" Sorbet hissed.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Mokka asked me.

"It seemed a good idea at the time."

"Your life is just a big bunch of it seemed a good idea at the time strung together."

"Show me your power!" Doorface rudely interrupted. "Only those with power can enter the door to the heavens. Show me your-"

"Yes alright, alright." I shot back. "Pipe the hell down."

I wasn't too sure what I was doing, to be totally honest. I just sort of span around and threw my hands in the air.

Suddenly everything went black.

Oops.

"Aghhhhhhhhhhhh!" Sorbet screamed, to my dark delight. "What have you done, Arsenic?"

"Granted us access to the door of heavens or whatever it was. That is what I have done."

"Door of the heavens." Doorface corrected me.

"Yes, that."

"We're DOOOOOOOMED!" Mokka suddenly yelled, being a total drama queen.

I was a bit concerned at this point, thinking I'd damned us all to eternal blackness; I was thankfully wrong. The light came back and never was I more happy to see a dim storage room.

"Now opens…the door to the heavens." The door helpfully told us before splitting his head apart.

"Oh." I scrunched up my nose. "I do hope he hasn't got his brain pouring out or something."

"Doors don't have brains." Sorbet retorted.

I simply sighed and went through. I was half expecting to see millions of clouds, glowy lights, maybe even an angel or two hanging around but the door of heavens was just guarding a ladder.

"Are you kidding me? All that work to find more work?"

"Maybe the heaven-y bit is up there." Sorbet scowled up the ladder. "Well, off you go Arsenic."

"What?! Why do I have to lead everyone everywhere?"

"Because you're so pretty." Mokka drawled.

I span around.

"Ta, hun. You too. We are a couple of beauties. Not you, Sorbet."

Mokka shook his head sadly at her. Sorbet, on the other-hand, looked relieved.

I clambered up the ladder. And I couldn't believe what was waiting for me at the top.

There were six glistening rockets standing in front of me. A brilliant ocean blue with golden decorations.

Suddenly, Sorbet ran towards one shouting about Lassi just as Pico and Chai ran up.

"Hey, you guys!" I smiled. "Look what we-"

I was cut off by an explosion.

A mass of smoke threw me backwards, causing me to land on my bum. I hid inside my oversized jumper as everyone around me coughed and choked. I felt the ground vibrate below me. One of the rockets was lighting up. The air got colder.

"The ROOF just OPENED!" Pico yelled, helpfully.

The air got thicker and thicker as did the smoke. I watched as I saw the outline of my four friends stumble around helplessly.

I shut my eyes and prayed.

My eyes fluttered open. I could taste the smoke in the air even though I was still hiding in my jumper.

I stood up, shakily. My friends were all collapsed around my feet. I didn't even know robots could collapse.

One of the rockets was gone. I knew it was Lassi, even without thinking. And there was only one thing I could do.

Go after her.

I pulled myself up the ladder. My legs were weak. Possibly from the fall. I felt like they were about to buckle under me like a newborn giraffe.

"Hold up." I turned to see Hyde. "Let me go with you."

I scrunched up my face.

"Get your own rocket."

"I don't know if you've noticed but there are six of us left. There are five rockets. If we don't share…Pico and Sorbet will."

My eyes widened. I knew Pico had a thing for Sorbet and she would get with him at any opportunity if she knew how much I hated the thought of them together.

The thought of them in a rocket…alone…surrounded by stars…together-

"Lets go!" I shouted, pulling him in the rocket.

"Where are we going?" Hyde asked.

"I don't know." I answered.

"Fair enough."

I pushed a button. The rocket started to vibrate. The computer desk flashed up and a voice started shouting.

"What did she say?" I shouted as the vibrating grew so overpowering I couldn't hear.

"Not sure. Pardon?!" Hyde shouted at the ceiling.

"Well, that's not going to work! It's one of them recordings, isn't it?" I frowned.

Then, a red lever popped up out of the desk.

"Erm. Ok." I frowned at it. Hyde and I both stared at it like it would suddenly start talking and telling us what on earth was going on. It didn't do anything for a while so I just pulled it.

"Now why did you do that?" He scowled at me. "It might blow up now. You've killed us both."

"Oh, quit your bitching. You don't know what's going on either… wait. Is this rocket moving?"

Hyde looked out of the window.

"Oh, look what you've done. We've taken off now!"

"Well that's what we were trying to do." I replied. I started pressing random buttons and soon the rocket threw itself up into the air.

"Agh!" Hyde yelled as he fell backwards, landing in a pile of boxes. "We're going to die in here."

Meanwhile, I had gone shooting off in the opposite direction and was now lying on my back with my legs in the air.

"Ow."

Hyde got up and started to steer. I peered over his shoulder.

"Would you go away, Arsenic? It's a bit weird having you looming around like some kind of vulture."

"There's Lassi!" I gasped, pointing at the window. "Quick, Hyde! Get her!"

Hyde shook his head in confusion so I bum-nudged him off the seat and starting steering like a madwoman.

"I don't know what I'm doing but I'm doing it anyway." I told him when he looked up at me from the floor.

I was close on Lassi's tail when suddenly, from completely out of nowhere, an asteroid suddenly appeared and rammed her away.

Hyde and I both screamed in surprise as Lassi hurtled down towards an even bigger rock.

"Actually I think that might be a planet." Hyde frowned.

"Well, it's a very ugly one-"

"Warning! Warning! Asteroid level high!" The computer barked at us, making us both jump.

"Well we know that." Hyde frowned.

"Fuel levels dangerously low! Going into standby!"

"Oh, you're not!" I shouted at it. "You have got to be kidding me."

"WARNING! DANGER OF CRASHING! DANGER OF CRASHING! WARNING!"

"This computer is bullying us." Hyde frowned.

Then, our rocket started to hurtle down to the massive rock we just witnessed Lassi land on.

I would've screamed if I'd of had the time to.


	5. In which there are moles

I let out a weak cough. I felt the ground below me so it was safe to assume I'd landed. With a grunt, I tried to sit up but my legs were like lead. They wouldn't move no matter how much I tried to shift them.

The most I could do was lift my head and see what exactly had happened.

I was hanging out of the rocket. My legs were trapped under the chair and my torso was just lolling out of the broken door. It reminded me of a dead body hanging out of a car door on a crime show I'd seen recently, but I pushed that thought to the back of my head.

"H-Help!" I tried to cry out. "H-Hyde!"

He was nowhere to be seen. I tried to dig my hands into the sandy ground so I could pull myself out but my legs would not move.

I coughed again. My whole mouth tasted of blood. I felt tired. I knew if I went to sleep I might not wake up. My eyes were drooping and I was just about to drift off when a croak startled me.

"Agh!" I cried, hitting my head on a fallen bar just hanging above me.

Boggart was staring at me. I was hoping for some kind of Lassie miracle where he would hop off and fetch someone to save me.

And hopefully my legs.

Then I remembered. All rockets had ejector seats. Professor Pistachio had been useful for once in his life. I turned my head to see a red button. It was an arm reach away.

I strained my arm but I couldn't reach. My fingertips brushed against it time and time again. I couldn't give up.

I finally accepted that I couldn't reach. My arm drooped. I went limp from fear, surrender and regret.

I was just about to give up when there was a huge crash and I watched as the chair went flying up into the sky and crashed down somewhere. I looked at the button to see Boggart happily resting on it.

"Good frog." I told him as I dragged myself along the floor. I hadn't got feeling in my legs yet.

"Mmph." I heard to my left.

I looked around, which was easier said than done because there was a rather big sandstorm brewing.

"Lassi!" I gasped as I saw a busted up rocket and a small heap on the floor.

"Mmm." She muttered as I slowly made my way over.

"Lassi? Are you ok?" I asked.

"Maaaaa." She muttered, trying to say something.

"Come on, Lassi!" I urged. "You can say it!"

"K-Kovo water…sandwiches…in the rocket…" she managed.

"You fat pig! You just want to eat!" I barked at her.

I still crawled over to the rocket, tugged myself up, reached for the sandwiches and water and proceeded to chuck the sandwiches all over Lassi and squirt her with water.

"AGH!" She screamed. She rolled over. "What the hell are you- OH! Arsenic! Why are you here?"

That made me think.

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I'm not sure…I think Hyde would know. He is meant to be here."

"But he's not?" She asked.

"But he's not." I nodded.

Lassi looked around. The sandstorm was worse now. She helped me off the floor and we steadied each other as we began to walk.

"Where are we?" Lassi asked.

"I don't know, somewhere stupid." I scowled. "It's not the water planet. It's not the wood planet. It might be the wind planet but I doubt it because that was our destination so it would be much too convenient. It's not the fire planet. I think it's definitely the earth planet."

"Good logic. What's the earth planet called?"

"Sheila." I lied.

"I see."

We wandered around for what seemed like days but it was probably just hours.

"We're going to be lost forever, aren't we?" Lassi suddenly sighed. "We'll never find Miss Madeline and we'll be stuck here in Sheila until we die."

"Lassi, this is no time to be depressing." I told her. "Just remember: wherever they will take us, we will find our own way back."

"Is that the Bible?" She asked me.

"Boyzone." I answered.

We carried on wandering around aimlessly. I was just about to yell and throw myself on the floor in a sad heap when Lassi started yelling.

"Look I found a path!"

"We can leave!" I sang happily. "I have never been so happy."

"Ok, don't take the Mick."

We strutted in pride at having found the exit but when we got there, we were pushed back by the wind.

"What the hell?" I shouted at the wind. "What are you doing?"

"Yeah, shouting at it, that'll help." Lassi sighed, rolling her eyes. "Let me try-"

"You're going to shout at it?" I frowned. "I really think all shouting should be left to me - the professional."

"No one is going to shout at it!"

And then, Lassi started spinning around with yellow glitter going everywhere. She thrust her hand in the air and a massive yellow symbol appeared in the air.

The wind got stronger, causing me to get pushed back even more. I wasn't even stood near the path anymore but Lassi was getting smaller and smaller.

Then the wind started to die down. My hair stopped whipping my the face and I stopped moving. It carried on until the wind was more of a light breeze.

"For a second there, I thought you made it worse!" I shouted at her.

"Well, I didn't. I fixed everything!" She sang. I raised my eyebrows at her as she danced through the path. "Don't worry, Arsenic! I'm sure your dark magic will come in handy soon."

"Piss off." I muttered.

I would have probably said more but then, I was interrupted by a low rumble. It came from under the ground at first but then it started sounding like it was getting closer to the surface…

A claw popped out of the ground, right where Lassi was standing. With a shriek, she jumped back. I ran forward to drag her away before she was eaten by this alien but then another claw popped up where I was running to.

I dodged it by hurtling myself to the ground. I pulled myself up to Lassi, who was bravely crying in fear.

"Is that it?" I asked her. "Does it not have a head-"

A head popped out of the ground and started glaring at us.

"Scratch that. It has a head."

Lassi was about to tell me off for being silly in a serious situation when she got a claw right to the face. She hurtled off to the left, leaving me stood alone.

"Hey!" I shouted at the claw monster. "That was rude!"

Luckily, it had turned night recently so my aura-watsit was in high power. I cast a shadow die at the clawguy causing him to yell and wriggle a bit before blasting me with sand.

Suddenly, Lassi ran up and hit the Clawface with a wind talon, which hurt him a lot. Then I remembered that wind was strong against earth for whatever reason.

"Are you ok, Arsenic?" She asked.

"Yeah. Just a bit sandy."

I threw another shadow die and he (I say he, it could've been anything to be honest) narrowed his eyes in pain.

Lassi used another wind talon causing the sandcreature to burrow under the sand, where it presumably died.

"Oh." I sighed, feeling a bit guilty.

"It left something!" Lassi grinned, who didn't really care about killing something as long as she got a present after. "It's a gummy frog!"

"Are you sure it's not Boggart?" I asked, but I turned to see that he was still on my shoulder albeit very sandy.

"What do you think it was guarding?" Lassi asked.

"I'm not psychic, Lassi. I dunno, maybe we go see?" I frowned, sarcastically.

"I don't like you when you're powered up." Lassi sniffed.

We nipped back to the rockets to heal up and then went back to the path and walked through.

In front of us lay a huge fortress-style building. It had a red light right at the front causing it to resemble Mokka.

"NO IT DOESN'T!" Lassi shouted when I told her. "Just because it looks a bit like a brown robot with a big red eye- oh I see your point."

"Well then." I frowned at her. I walked up to the door and was about to go through but Lassi pulled me back.

"You…you really wanna go in? It's gonna be, like, pretty dark."

"How is that meant to be convincing? I'm a dark mage. You can't have a dark mage that's afraid of the dark."

"Well what are you scared of then?"

"Moths, clowns, spiders and people cracking their knuckles." I frowned at her. "Now don't go saying there'll be moths in there because it's dark so I know there won't be. There won't be any clowns because this isn't a major hangout for them. Spiders…probably. People cracking their knuckles…possibly. Now, lets go in!"

"But-"

She didn't get time to finish because I had already dragged her in.

She was right; it was very dark. I could hear little drips of something liquid-y in the background. Apart from that, it was silent.

We crept down one of the little paths seeing as the other was blocked with bins.

It curved round a big centre building or whatever and was probably the darkest part of the whole building.

Then, something walked out. We jumped back to see a silver robot.

"Intruders. Intruders. Dispose of immediately." It said.

Another one walked out next to it.

"Intruders. Intruders. Dispose of immediately." It repeated.

"Oh dear." I muttered. "Lassi, what do we do about these-"

But I turned to see that Lassi had tried to abandon me and ran into two other robots, both saying that they were going to dispose of us.

"Oh, Arsenic. Look what you've done." She shouted at me as she returned.

"What I've done? You're the one that alerted those two over there and tried to leave me behind!"

"Well-"

"This is what you get for being like that!" I spat at her.

We soon vanquished the offending robots and were going up a elevator that Lassi pulled me into.

"We have to get out of here RIGHT NOW!" She shouted as we went up. "I do not care about anything else, we must LEAVE!"

I ignored her and pushed the up button. I hadn't come to this place just to cry in a lift and leave again.

We went up another floor and, extraordinarily, there weren't robots waiting to zap us this time.

We went up yet another elevator and, slightly more extraordinary, a rocket was standing right in the middle of the floor. It was big, gold and, best of all, unguarded.

"What so they can guard a floor with nothing but bins," I complained "but they leave the rocket floor completely empty."

"Listen!" Lassi suddenly shouted. "Do you see anyone?"

I frowned at her after she made that stupid remark but I still followed her as she crept around the rocket.

"There's no one here." I told her.

"Yeah…lets steal the rocket!" Lassi suddenly shouted.

"I thought you would never ask!"

We ran up the steps and Lassi, because I couldn't have been me, obviously stepped on an alarm because sirens started ringing and lights started flashing.

"They may have realised we're here." I whispered to her.

"Quite possibly." She replied.

"I blame you." I told her as about six robots ran up and surrounded us.

"Hah! Yeah, right! Who stupidly set off the alarm? The clumsy idiot or the ditzy blonde- ah. I see your point." She frowned. "It was still you."

We were so busy whispering that when we looked up there was a red robot that had been previously unseen.

"Oh." We both said. "Hello."

"Intruders. Initiate extinguish protocol. Purge, purge, purge." It replied.

"RUN FOR IT!" Lassi shouted. I don't know where she was planning on running to seeing as we were surrounded, but she obviously didn't get there fast enough.

The red robot charged at us, knuckles sparking, and there was a flash of blue light before nothing but black.

The first thing I could feel was the stone floor on my cheek. I'd gone through a decade of sleeping on the floor in random places on Shadra so an unusual, but sometimes handy, talent of mine was recognising different types of floor with only my face.

I sat up and saw a massive robot staring at me from the other side of a vicious spike pit.

We looked at each other for a few more seconds before he startled me by making a robotic grunt.

I rolled onto my back in shock, legs unattractively in the air, causing the robot to make some sort of cackle as if he found the whole thing highly amusing. He then marched off to bully some other unsuspecting teenage girl.

"Yeah, he's a bitch. I call him Terence."

I pushed myself up to see Hyde sat in the corner.

"What the-" I gasped. Then all shock and general confusion was turned to anger. "Where did you randomly vanish to?!"

"Here." He replied helpfully.

"And you couldn't help me before you wandered off like some sort of…of…wanderer?" I shouted. "I was trapped! I could've lost my legs. Boggart had to save me!"

As if he heard his name, Boggart crawled up to investigate all this shouting. He croaked on my shoulder as if telling us to pipe down before crawling back into my pocket.

"Anyway, it's nice to see you too." Hyde frowned at me. "Did you climb over that gate too?"

"What gate?"

"The one at the bottom of that stretch we landed on. You didn't go the other way did you?"

"…no." I lied.

"Arsenic! Everyone knows there's an ant-lion at that opening! You should be dead! Why aren't you?"

"…er-"

"You didn't kill it did you?" He yelled again.

"…no." I lied again.

"Arsenic! That was the last one! You fool, you've caused them to go extinct! Why didn't you, before going that way, pull out your encyclopaedia and read up on Erd's biological and ecological state and consider all options before just going whatever way you want and killing the last of a species?!" He shouted whilst standing up.

I stood up too.

"…Because! I'm normal!" I retorted. "How did you get arrested then?"

"I ran into some robots who kidnapped me and brought me here."

"Well, that was very foolish of you, wasn't it?" I scowled.

"A little bit, yeah. And I was planning on coming back for you and then Lassi later but I didn't know where she was. I thought you were asleep and didn't want to wake you."

"No you did not. Now I'm going to break us out of here."

"How do you know how to break out of prison?" Hyde asked.

"Hyde, I lived with Pico. I have broken him out of prison multiple times before. Don't look so worried. Mainly for small offences like throwing his bitch's bike off a cliff when she called me a witch or taking the mayor's cat hostage."

I cast my dark magic spell, throwing the whole building into black. I heard the robot guard going mad somewhere and when my spell eventually faded, I saw him right in front of me.

Hyde pulled me back with a yell but there was no need. The robot had thrown himself into the pit of spikes in all his confusion. He sparked a bit before a huge smoke cloud just blew up. It hung around for a bit until it gradually faded.

Now, with the help of my handy bridge, Hyde and I were able to cross and leave our little cell.

As Hyde unhelpfully stood around like a lemon, I decided to explore. I thought I might as well seeing as I didn't plan on staying.

I went around the corner to find a small control panel. There was a big red button in the middle, just begging for me to press it.

I did so. There was a low rumbling.

Hyde's shout of:

"Oh, look! A bridge!"

Probably meant that it triggered the bridge. I walked around to see Hyde crossing it. I was a bit behind him when he walked up to Lassi.

"Lassi! It's-OOF!"

Lassi, in all her fear and stupidity, had randomly punched Hyde in the trousers causing him to fall over.

"Back off, mecha-freak! Arsenic? Why are you here?"

"I'm here to save you. So is Hyde but he's currently unavailable right now."

"Huh? Why?"

"Cos you just killed him." I replied, lifting him by the arm.

"Agh! Hyde! I'm so, so, so, so, sorry!" Lassi cried as Hyde tried to stand up.

"N-No. I-I-I'm alright." He stuttered, indicating that he was, in fact, dying a slow painful death.

I shook my head. After all, these were the people who would be helping us save Miss Madeline.

Miss Madeline was so screwed.

"Right…" Hyde sighed, once he had the ability to speak. "Lets get out of here."

That seemed like a good idea so we all followed Hyde out like a bunch of lost lambs. We'd just reached the door when…

"BZZZZZZZZ!"

"Bzzzzzzzzz?" Lassi frowned. "It's not a bee!"

"That's really not the point we should be focusing on." Hyde informed her.

After all, my bridge had just leapt out of its supposed-to-be death bed and looked rather angry about me trying to kill it and wandering about on his head. Which was fair enough because I wouldn't appreciate that type of behaviour either.

"What do we do?" Lassi squealed.

As if he was answering her question, Hyde ran forward and shot a white beam out of his hands which impacted with the robots head.

" !" I gasped which earned me odd looks. Even from the robot who was currently blind. "What was that?!"

"Arclight." He sniffed, a little flustered from having just nearly murdered a robot three times his size. "It's quite a powerful spell."

"You're telling me!" Lassi gasped.

"No, he wasn't Lassi. He was telling me because I was the one who asked- HOLY JESUS!" I shouted because the robot, who was considerably less dead and more angry, had just shot a zap net at me.

Lassi shot wind at it which caused it to fall into the spike pit again.

"That scared the crap outta me!" Lassi gasped. "At least it's dead now, though."

"I'm not sure." I frowned. "That's what I thought last time it fell into a spike pit but it just tried to kill us."

I walked over and poked it with my foot. It didn't move.

"Lets just leave." I said quickly as I ran out of the building.

Hyde and Lassi followed me.

"Fresh air!" Hyde breathed.

It was then I saw the purple thing.

"What's that?!" I shouted at it which caused it to scamper off. "Come back here, Tim!"

"What?!" Lassi shouted as we started to chase it for no reason whatsoever.

"It just looks like a Tim." I shouted back as I ran. The wind blew my hair everywhere and it felt quite refreshing to be running in the wind. I'd never liked running before so it was quite nice to run and enjoy it. I was also surprised at how I hadn't fallen over yet. That normally occurred when I moved faster than a snail pace and-

Suddenly the ground disappeared and I felt myself falling down. But I didn't stop at the floor. I kept on falling until I landed on hard rock.

"Ow!" I shouted.

Running was not that fun anymore.

"Hey! That was the mighty Spiny-Mole-Hole you just fell in! Get out right now, you unwelcome cow!"

"How dare you! I am not a cow, you rude girl!" I shouted. I turned my head to see another purple thing. "Oh, hello Tim."

"I am not Tim!"

"Are you a purple people eater?"

"No!"

"That's alright then." I frowned, getting up. "Now- ARGH!"

Suddenly, a large mound of Lassi landed on me, sending me plummeting to the ground.

"Not another one!" Tim shouted. "I demand that you-"

"Argh!" Came Hyde's voice.

"Oof!" Lassi shouted.

"THREE?! Right I quit. I don't want to be the royal hole guard anymore!" Tim shouted. When I was free of people on top if me, I looked up to see Tim running away sobbing.

"Oh, Tim, don't cry!" I shouted after him but he was gone.

"Arsenic…what's going on?" Lassi whimpered.

"I'm not sure." I told her. "But they're not purple people eaters, so we should be ok."

"They look a bit like moles." Hyde frowned.

"Tim did say something about that. He called himself a Spiny Mole and then yelled at me for falling through his hole which is not a euphemism." I told them.

We started to walk down the long tunnel. There were more Tims dotted around, all of which were giving us odd looks.

"Wait…don't tell me. You're the mages who escaped the robot prison aren't you?" Asked a mole who was stood by a ladder.

"Well it wasn't exactly hard." I frowned.

"Yeah…that was us." Lassi said, ignoring me. "But we don't know what's going on, we're just trying to get to the wind planet!"

"Hm." The mole frowned. He must have been a bit simple because he seemed confused and it wasn't exactly a mind-boggling statement. "Why don't you talk to our king?"

"Ok." Hyde sighed. He seemed exasperated by the amount of purple mole things that were staring at him indiscreetly. "Where is he?"

"Basically, go up this ladder that I am unhelpfully stood in front of," the mole instructed, "and then you'll find this massive mushroom thats stood there for no godamn reason. There's a door there and you should go through that. Now hurry up because we've all been waiting for you."

"No you haven't!" I scoffed. "We didn't even know we were coming here! If it wasn't for Lassi's awful driving and that stupid rock, we'd probably still be in space trying to find a wind planet!"

Against my better judgement, I followed Hyde and Lassi, who had left whilst I was speaking, up the ladder. We appeared to be in a city full with even more moles.

"Oh, god not more!" Hyde shouted, causing a few to turn around.

We stumbled our way to the massive mushroom (which Hyde walked into, causing me to crash into it as well when I was laughing at him) and soon found the door we were meant to go into to find the king.

Hyde led us to introduce ourselves to him. He was nearly weeing himself with excitement when he found out we were from another planet.

"You must be the heroes prophesied! I am most honoured to meet you!" He declared, kissing Hyde's hand which sent Lassi and I into a fit of badly suppressed giggles. Hyde, on the other hand, looked less than pleased. "I am King Gorgonzola the thirteenth. Your arrival is most perfectly timed, heroes. I do believe, with much regret, that the doomy times are upon us."

"Oh, waily waily waily!" His little green buddy cried. I hadn't even noticed him but that was because, in my earlier description, 'little' was the operative word.

"Now, you stop that Minister Munster!" Gorgy scolded him. "We have no need to fear when we have these wonderful heroes."

"We're not exactly heroes." I frowned.

"That's true." Lassi added, jerking a thumb at me. "She's the stupidest girl you will ever meet."

"It may be true but it's not nice to say." I tutted at her.

The king shook his head at us, maybe to stick up for me, but most likely to shut us up.

"Now, now space heroes. Do not cause such an unheroic racket. You are meant to get to Puffoon the wind planet, I hear."

"Yes." Hyde answered.

"So you want to help us so we'll help you?"

"No." Hyde frowned. "I think there's been a mis-"

"You must go and vanquish our most hated enemy! The titan of these caverns! The ant queen!"

"What?!" Lassi shrieked. "We don't want to battle a queen ant, we just want to get to Puffoon and rescue our teacher like we were meant to in the first place!"

"Now, now o-shorter of the three heroes. Don't be so loud, it is rather tedious, first thing in a morning." He turned to me, hope in his eyes. "O-Darker of the three heroes, it's all down to you. Will you kill the Ant Queen and massacre her people? Or will you get sent to the Spiny Mole dungeon?"

This has got completely out of hand.

"I-I can't." I stumbled about, looking for an excuse. "I'm…washing…the…Mayor's…cheese?"

"Ah!" His stern but hopeful look turned into a grin. "You will vanquish the Ant Queen!"

"I would rather deep-fat fry my face." I told him.

After another long speech which I couldn't be bothered listening to, King Gorgonzola told us to meet him at the 'Digging Grounds' but first we should all go to the inn because we look "positively ghastly".

I couldn't see how we could stay in the inn. It smelt like feet, just as the rest of the place did, but I was hoping they might of Febreezed it or at least made an effort to get rid of the fungi growing out of the carpet.

"Hello!" Smiled the inn-woman. We were probably her first customers. "Welcome to the Sweetroot Inn! Would you like to stay?"

I was going to say no but Hyde butt in.

"Listen! You better stay on these people's good sides!" He hissed. He was quite tall, so he had to bend down to my level to reach me. "You're quite good at telling them what they want to hear. Just keep doing that."

"But I am not a mole-pleaser. I have bigger life aspirations than that." I replied.

He half-smiled.

"Look, just…it seems that the only way we'll get off this planet is by helping these stupid moles. Just go along with what they say and we can save Miss Madeline."

Yes because that was what I was talking about when I said I had life-aspirations. Saving a person that I don't even like.

I turned to see Lassi had already booked us in to sleep.

"Would you like to stay til morning or night?" She asked.

"Yes." I answered, not thinking. Luckily, everyone (who didn't know me) thought I was joking and Hyde quickly said we were staying until day.

That night I tossed and turned. I was unable to get any sleep because of that stupid-poopid Ant Queen. Was she big? She'd have to be to eat those fat mole people, if that's what she does. Questions like that were running through my mind all night until I had the inn-woman started hitting a gong.

"Wake up, heroes! Its time for your destinyyyyy!"

"Who the hell told her about that?!" I shouted, sitting bolt upright.

"Ah, t'was me, space heroes! I've jolly-well dug a hole to the Ant Queen's sinister lair. Be sure to destroy any ant you see, be it father, mother or child!"

My eyes went as wide as saucers. And everyone said that Shadrans were the vilest races. Well, apart from that book which I still had on me. I was pretty sure we'd never force young lost foreigners to kill children.

We were lead out to this field where there were moles milling about.

"Now heroes!" The king shouted as soon as we arrived. "My moles have been digging all night for you."

I looked down the hole along with Hyde and Lassi.

"Aw, hellllll naw!" I declared. "I'm not going down there!"

Before we protested more, good old King Gorgy had given us a hard shove on our backs. Well, just me and Hyde because he only had two hands.

"That was out of order!" Hyde yelled back.

"Ooh, where've you gone- AGH!" Lassi shouted before she landed in the hole too.

"Quick, take the ladder. Now heroes, off you trot!" He replied. The ladder was dragged away, leaving me thinking that, yes, this had definitely gotten out of hand.

* * *

So did you enjoy? Did you not? Any criticism is greatly appreciated as are any other things people have to say! Thanks for reading :)


	6. In which the heroes escape Erd

Thanks for the review, CatKit! The chapters are slowly getting longer and longer as this story goes on but hopefully it's not that annoying.

And TurtleFish, you can if you want! I'd be really happy if you did. :D

And Leafclaw, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUUUUU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUUUUU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR LEAFCLAW, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUUUU! Thanks for reviewing, also.

* * *

"Damn king!" I muttered once the offending mole had disappeared from sight.

"Well don't release any aggression yet. You can take that out on the Ant Queen." Hyde frowned.

We unsurely followed the pathway, not knowing wether we get there and there'd be a whopping great ant woman lurking around. King Gorgonzola hadn't actually said where the Ant Queen was or how far the tunnel went so she could essentially be anywhere. I had visions of looking to my left to see Lassi had been stolen by some sort of ant/woman mutant.

"This is creeping me out." Lassi muttered. "I don't like this. What does this Ant Queen look like?"

I hadn't really thought that much about what she'd look like. I pictured her as a half woman with scary eyes and an ant body with insect-y legs. But she could be a real human with a dress made out of mole skin. Or just a big fat ant in a dress.

The thought of an ant in a dress flopping around made me laugh and lifted the mood, even if it was just me laughing.

"Hey, wanna buy some food?" A mole beside us asked.

"Ooh, yes!" Lassi gasped, pulling out all of the bira we'd collected from…various places. I didn't recall picking up bira but Lassi had quite a lot of it so we must've got it from somewhere. "I want some of that, and some of this-"

"What the hell is that?" I frowned.

"May I enquire what this is?" Lassi asked the salesperson in a posh way, in hope of getting a discount. It almost never worked.

"That's cheese, that is." The mole grunted.

"Ooh! Cheese! Lots of that, please!" Lassi grinned.

"Lassi, what did I tell you?" I scolded her. "Cheese is sleaze, just say no!"

"I try saying no to cheese but it doesn't listen!" She cried, shoving more into her brown sheep-skin bag.

I walked away to where Hyde had separated himself from us, possibly from shame.

"I can't be doing with this." He frowned as soon as I leaned against the wall next to him. "What the hell does she need cheese for?"

"It's Lassi, she's addicted. I tried to stop it spiralling out of control but…" I trailed off as Lassi ran towards us, mouth surprising full of something other than cheese.

"Guys, we now have food!" She grinned.

"That is if you've not eaten it all yet." I added.

"I've only tried some biscuits."

Biscuits? There was a word I liked yet hadn't heard for a while. Before I knew it, she had shoved one into my mouth.

"Mmph." Hyde managed next to me, who had also been force-fed a biscuit.

"Now eat!" She commanded. We hadn't eaten in a day but I wasn't going to if I was forced.

"No thank you." I spluttered. It probably sounded more like 'Mm meh meh' but Lassi understood.

We finally managed to eat the biscuit Lassi had force-fed us and I probably would have liked it more if I'd have wanted to eat it.

"You're getting too skinny, Arsenic." Lassi scowled. "You used to be the perfect weight but now you're like Sorbet. A twiggy person who'd snap if you poked her too hard."

"I am not a twiggy person. Don't compare me to her anyway, I still don't like her."

"Can we please kill the massive ant like the crazy moles told us to?" Hyde frowned.

"Alright, Sassypants McGee. I am having none of your attitude today." I told him.

We walked off again until we came to a door. I was quite thankful, really. This looked like a rushed job of a tunnel. Bits of it were crumbling everywhere and it smelt funny. I didn't want to be crushed to death and then have to smell like clay for eternity. This door upon closer inspection, didn't look that much better. It was grey but slowly rusting away. I thought this tunnel was supposed to be newly built last night. These damn moles were scrimping out on us.

"Will the Ant Woman be behind here?" Lassi whimpered behind me.

"Probably." Hyde nodded at her. When he nodded, I noticed his normal tall hair was starting to flop a little. It bounced when he nodded.

"You need to fix your hair." I informed him.

"After we've killed this whopping great ant." He nodded again to my amusement. His hair bobbled about again.

He opened the door with a grunt and we walked through the dark tunnels that lay out behind it. I felt bad for dissing the mole tunnels. These ones were worse. It was cold due to the holes in the ceiling. There were pools of yellowing water dotted about which caused the sound of ominous drips echoing about.

"It smells in here." Lassi whispered. She was clutching my arm for dear life. "And there's a spider on your shoulder."

Hyde, who had been reassuringly holding my hand, stiffened. I knew he hated spiders. I let go off his hand and looked at the spider that was nestling on my bare shoulder.

"Boo." I whisper yelled at it before picking it up by a leg and feeding it to Boggart, who was hiding in my bag.

He ate it greedily and clambered out. He sat on my shoulder and croaked. It echoed about.

"Hello, stranger. Where've you been?" Lassi muttered at him. You wouldn't expect it but usually squeamish Lassi actually got on with Boggart.

"He's been hiding from all these crazy-ass moles. They might eat him. And us." Hyde muttered. He'd obviously gotten over the traumatic experience with the spider.

We kept on trekking through the tunnels. At least in this place there weren't any random monsters jumping out everywhere-

Oh. Spoke too soon.

For there was a mutant ant person creeping out from behind a rock.

It eyed us. We eyed it. Neither knew whether the other was a threat or not.

"How." I said for no reason. Lassi and Hyde broke eye contact to look at me in confusion. Even Boggart shuffled about, a bit uncomfortable.

"How?" Lassi frowned.

"I'm not sure." I replied.

The ant was now clicking at us. It had sharp pincers. It's head was tilted to the side. It had a large wooden cane, which amused me.

"Do we try to reply?" Hyde asked me.

"Braghhh." Boggart croaked, suddenly.

The ant stopped clicking. It then started again.

"Oh. Boggart is a multi-lingual, apparently." I smiled at him.

The ant started clicking again, faster.

Boggart croaked at it again.

The ant let out a screaming sound, ran forward and smacked Lassi over the head with his little cane.

"What has your frog done?!" Hyde shouted.

"I think he's been sassing it." I frowned as I ran forward and kicked it in the pants. It doubled over and that was it.

"Could you please control your amphibian?" Lassi squealed from the floor.

In my mind the conversation went like this:

Ant: Who are you, amphibian and your tall friends? Have you come to visit our queen?

Boggart: Hell no, woman. Your queen is a little rat and I am going to set her on fire, you moe'suckra.

Ant: How dare you?! Take that back!

Boggart: Aw, hellllllllllllllll naw! I mean everything I ever say ever.

Ant: I am going to kill the blonde one. *scream and Lassi hitting*

"Oh, yeah, Boggart. You told him." I smiled at him as he eyed the ant on the floor.

"I doubt that's how the conversation went." Hyde said, as he lead us around the tunnels.

Lassi was still clinging onto my arm in terror. Hyde was holding tightly onto my hand and Boggart was just hanging out on my shoulder. He was having an ace time; there were tons of insects for him to eat. Plus, he kept getting us into fights with ants, some of which had swords.

Soon we came to a purple-y looking door. It was less rusty than the other door but it still looked like it was about to fall apart. It had silver patterns on it and compared to everything else in this disgusting tunnel, it looked quite regal.

We opened it and, for safety reasons, I left Boggart in a puddle to splash about in so he didn't start sassing off any queens that were laying about.

There was only a small pathway before we found an opening in the wall that lead to the ugliest thing I'd ever seen.

"We have to fight THAT?!" Lassi screeched at it. "There is no way- we are going to lose. We are going to lose and we are going to die. All the moles will just laugh at us. Miss Madeline is going to die as well and she'll laugh at us in the afterlife-"

"Lassi! Keep your hopes up! Or down. Wherever you want to put them. Just have hopes somewhere." I told her, strictly. "We are not going to die. She…that is going to die, ok?"

"I think she can hear you." Hyde said next to us.

The mutant ant woman did look very angry. Her large behind was glowing and pulsating. She also had little ant claws and was clawing the air.

"Oh." I frowned. "Whoopsie-doodles."

She then called out some little ant people. One had a sword and shield, the other had a cane. Lassi shivered at the cane, I noticed, but they made me laugh.

"Look. They're ants dressed as people!" I sniggered.

Hyde shook his head, possibly ashamed at knowing this easily entertained noobasaurus.

"You've made them mad now. You're worse than your damn frog." He scowled at me.

"Boggart is a toad and oh well it wouldn't be the first time." I lobbed some dark magic over and hit the ant queen. She writhed about a bit making weird 'eeeeeee' noises.

"Your go, Lassi!" I instructed. "You're strongest against her, after all."

"I can't." She replied.

"What?"

"Well, whilst we were walking through the caves, I started eating the cheese and basically I am choking."

"What were you thinking, eating cheese before a battle?" I yelled.

"I was thinking 'ooh, some cheese'."

I frowned at her.

"Cheese is sleaze, just say no."

"I try saying no to cheese but it doesn't listen!" Lassi coughed back.

Shaking my head, I moved behind her held her by the shoulders and kneed her hard in the back.

She yelped and coughed out.

"Thanks for that." She cast her magic at the ant queen, causing her to roll around even more.

Hyde did the same and the Ant Queen was still dying ridiculously. I shook my head as she made weird noises and rolled around. This ant-woman was a disgrace to her ant people.

Her little cronies looked embarrassed too. One was shaking its head, hiding its face with its pincers. The other, the one with the sword, was just looking the other way as if it had nothing to do with anything going on.

It was the like the ant versions of Lassi, Hyde and I. I, of course, being the Ant Queen.

Lassi obviously thought the same because she was snickering at me.

However, I got the last laugh because the Ant Queen, now she'd pulled herself together, had squirted some ear-waxy type goo at Lassi.

"It burns!" She cried out. I shook my head, roles reversed, with Lassi becoming the Ant Queen. I looked to my left at Hyde and we both shook our heads.

It was a slow battle, because the Ant Queen kept rolling about and making stupid noises, but finally the three ants were gone. I didn't even feel guilt about it this time. That was scary.

"Ew, she left something." Lassi frowned, still covered in ant liquid, which didn't sound worse than ear-wax, in my opinion.

Hyde walked over to the box that had appeared in a corner of the room. He kneeled down and opened it.

"What the hell are these?" He exclaimed. I walked over and peered in.

"Oh." I said simply, rather surprised. For in the box, were strange brown gloves with bits falling off. They had metal razors sticking out of the fingers. "Eurgh." I added because they were quite ugly as well.

Lassi came running over and stared at them too.

"Well Lassi you better put them in your bag." Hyde sighed at her. He picked them up with two fingers and dropped it in Lassi's bag like it was a bomb.

"Why?!"

"Because if we carry them around in the open someone might see us. We can't get papped carrying ugly glove things. Besides, someone might think we're planning a terrorist attack." He told her.

Boggart hopped over at this point. I scooped him up and put him on my shoulder. He was still wet from the puddle and he smelt a bit too.

We walked out through the tunnels again and encountered even more ants who apparently hadn't been informed their queen had snuffed it so there was so point in guarding her anymore. We fought them off and carried on. I would've described more but it was basically the same as when we entered only without speaking.

Apparently chit-chat seemed rude after brutally murdering someone who did us no personal harm (except Lassi) because some crazy moles told us to.

I blame Sorbet for all of this.

"How can you blame Sorbet? She isn't even here!" Hyde frowned once we were out of the ant tunnels.

"If you give me some time and a notepad to do working out on, I will find a way to pin all of this on her."

"She probably could." Lassi nodded.

The saddest thing was that I would probably do that. But Sorbet deserved it, she sucks.

"Anyway," Hyde frowned. "Let's go find the king and tell him we killed the Ant Queen."

"Maybe we can offload those glove things off on him. Which, by the way Lassi, are still in your bag." I added. Lassi shrieked. "I don't know why he'll want disgusting mittens but maybe we can lie and say they're magic."

We reached the king's chambers and he greeted us with a happy grin.

"Ah! I can tell by the fact that you're not dead and haven't been eaten by an ant that you destroyed the Ant Queen."

"Instead of destroy, how about shamelessly murder?" Hyde grumbled, quiet enough for the king to not hear. He obviously felt worse about the whole thing than I did.

Lassi on the other hand obviously had no conscience whatsoever and if you looked deep into her eyes, you'd be able to see the devil sacrificing baby goats.

That was probably an exaggeration.

"Here, have these weird yet truthfully magical gloves." I frowned, throwing them at him. Everyone gasped and I realised I just threw a possibly terrorist item at a king and I was going to be executed.

Until…he smiled widely.

"MINISTER!" He cried, nearly seeing himself with excitement. "It's the Diggy Claws!"

"It's not, is it?" The green person yelped, trying to hop into the king's lap to see for himself.

A little trio of moles ran up to the king, tears in their little physco eyes.

"Is it really true, your majesty? We have the Diggy Claws?"

The king nodded, weeping openly.

"I do not mean to cry in front of you, my friends, but it is true. We have the beautiful Diggy Claws!"

"Oh my God, lets leave." I whispered to Hyde. "They're physcos. They're going to kill us."

Hyde nodded and I grabbed Lassi as we started to slowly back away when…

"My good heroes!" The king wept. "You have saved us all! We can now find food and it's all down to you. You must travel to other planets and do good deeds there!"

"No thanks. We just need to get to Puffoon and save our teacher." Hyde frowned.

"But it's been written in the stars! It's beyond your control but you will get to Puffoon and it won't stop there. You will carry on to other places, meet wonderful people and do amazing things. You will see such majesty laid out before your eyes and you will all become the most talented mages in the solar system."

"…Have you been drinking?" I frowned.

"Just a tad." The king sniffed. "But I was scared for your return. Anyway, what do you want to know about the other planets?"

"One thing." I frowned. "Which planet is most likely to be home to the Ewoks?"

"Well, at the moment, Cassia. It's usually the water planet but lately it's frozen up for no reason. The Ewoks have lots of fur so they'd be able to live there and remain warm."

"We just need to find the one with all the Jabba the Huts live and keep well away from it." Hyde half-smiled at me. He had been the one to show me the films and whilst I had really liked the Ewoks, I'd hated Jabba the Hut.

"I shall dig you a new tunnel to The Land Where The Stars Sleep and then you shall be able to continue the quest." The mole smiled at us, still a bit weepy. "What wonderful people you are."

We went back to the inn to wait for the tunnel to be built. Through the night we could hear the king exclaim to his peers about the Diggy Claws, which erupted us into a fit of giggles every time we heard him. They were general shouts of 'Blimey, my friends, hard rock is no longer a problem! We shall live forever!' and they lasted all night so it was hard to get sleep.

When we awoke, we went to the digging grounds to see King Gorgonzola leap out of a hole with a smile as big as his face.

"You have truly blessed us heroes. We can dig through hard rock as if it was soft cheese."

"Don't mention cheese." Lassi murmured, obviously traumatised after the cheese incident with the Ant Queen.

"Bleu! Blarney! Wensleydale! Come on, we must dig. I, King Gorgonzola de Frommagio, command it for these heroes!"

I noticed Lassi was a bit green after all of those cheese-referenced names. Serves her right for having an unhealthy cheese addiction.

"Hey, Lassi. What type of cheese is made backwards?" Hyde asked her. Seeing as cheese was in the question, he'd probably been thinking the exact same as me.

"I dunno." She groaned.

"Edam." He grinned.

I chuckled whilst Lassi muttered a curse under her breath.

"Arsenic, it's a joke. You're meant to laugh."

"Fine. Har! Har! Har! Har! Har!" I fake-laughed. He narrowed his eyes at me for a second before turning to Lassi.

"Hey, Lassi-"

"Before you carry on," I frowned "how many of these do you actually know?"

"A lot. What do you think I was doing last night?"

"Oh, great."

Luckily, King Gorgonzola returned at that point so he didn't have time to explain what happened after the explosion at the French cheese factory.

"Your tunnel, heroes!" He grinned. He actually left the ladder up this time.

"All was left was de brie." Hyde whispered to me, as we walked.

I shook my head at him and carried on.

"Now this is the ladder that will take you to The Land Where The Stars Sleep. You will be able to power up- actually no. I am going to leave it to you to figure out because you're space heroes and you can. Goodbye. THREE CHEERS FOR HYDE!" King Gorgonzola yelled, obviously having decided his favourite. "If you go to The Land Where The Stars Sleep and awaken the energy, a rocket that became dormant will awaken. THREE MORE CHEERS FOR HYDE!"

"AND ARSENIC AND LASSI!" A mole yelled.

"GO GET EM, ARSENIC!" A trio to my left, including the minister, shouted.

"YOU CAN DO IT, LASSI!" A young child mole screamed.

"I LOVE YOU, HYDE!" The King shouted making Hyde look down and scurry up the ladder.

When we were all up, it felt a relief to get fresh air after being stuck in those dusty tunnels for days on end. It was night so I was powered up and Hyde was screwed if he annoyed me.

"So where exactly are we going?" Lassi frowned.

"I don't know, my little cheese monkey, but it's somewhere that the stars sleep." I replied, peering into the darkness.

"What about that tunnel over there?" Hyde pointed towards a tunnel that we'd only just noticed.

Clambering out of the hole, we all walked over to the tunnel (not before I tripped over a hat on the floor. It was Pizza but we couldn't be bothered warping anywhere) and looked inside.

"Oh, great. Another dark, wet, smelly tunnel with something horrible at the end." I scowled.

I heard Hyde tut at me. It echoed around creating an eerie atmosphere. He grabbed my hand and I grabbed Lassi's and he lead us into the darkness. Boggart was still fast asleep in my bag, the lucky whatsit.

"So are we just going as far as we can?" Lassi asked.

"Yeah, that's the plan. Look there's light over there." Hyde told her.

"God dangit, Hyde we're on some sort of cliff!" Lassi shouted at him.

It was true. Hyde had lead us onto a precarious ledge covered with grey, dead machinery. But, however, at the end of the ledge was a huge, brown windmill. It was old and miserable, surrounded with sad statues. They were also grey and dull. Dull lights hung around. If everything was working, it'd be like Blackpool Illuminations.

"Well, this is like some sort of miserable fair ground." Lassi scowled, thinking the same as me.

That would be like a clown turning into a grey haired man in a business suit who told lies all the time.

I shook my head to clear the weirdness of that thought away, especially because I didn't like clowns.

Lassi ran forward and stood right at the end of the ledge. She shouted a spell and turned.

A light breeze picked up which turned into a gale. I was scared Lassi would go flying over the edge from the scale of the wind but she seemed alright.

Then the windmill began to turn.

It was slow at first but as the gale picked up so did it's speed. Soon it was turning so quickly I had images of it flying off and hitting someone upside the head.

Then it turned pink.

"Why is it pink?!" I shouted out because it was a bit weird and random for a brown windmill to go pink all of a sudden.

But then multi-coloured lights flickered on around the windmill. Lights danced all around and some sort of cheerful fairground music started to play. Well, it was meant to be cheerful but it sounded terrifyingly crazy like the type of music they'd play in an asylum circus or something.

The statues flashed pink and and all the machines turned on, lights everywhere.

It was so bright I had to look the other way and peer into the dark tunnel.

It was like the inside of a crazy killer-clown's mind. I shuddered at the thought of clowns, let alone crazy murderous ones.

"Look, guys! I did it. I made the windmill come alive! Isn't it so pretty?" Lassi marvelled.

"Yes. Beautiful. Lets leave." I yelled quickly but Lassi pulled me back.

"No, Arsenic! Look, it's so colourful and lovely."

"Lassi, let go of me." I told her.

"I'd listen to her, Lassi, the vein is bigger than I've ever seen it." Hyde grimaced to my side.

Apparently, I had a vein on my neck that got bigger the more irritated I became. I didn't believe it but everyone seemed afraid of The Vein so it was probably true.

Lassi let me go at this and I turned around, very angry.

"I've said we should leave and now we are going to leave." I said, calmly. "The Vein has spoken."

Hyde and Lassi seemed to shrink, even though I wasn't annoyed with him, and we traipsed out of the scary physco clown room.

Lassi was not pleased though and seemed to have grown some because she started sassing with me.

"Well, I hope you two are very happy now you've killed the mood." She murmured.

Hyde looked offended.

"You two?"

"Mm-hm. Arsenic…and The Vein!"

I turned around again and I must have looked pretty angry because Hyde looked like he'd just swallowed an internal organ by accident.

"I am having none of your sass today, alright, Lassi? Now if you want to stay in the freaky clown room, you can, but you'll be staying in there alone."

"What about Hyde?" Lassi frowned in confusion.

"If Hyde steps out of line, he'll be getting Shadow Die-d into oblivion." At this point we were out of the tunnel.

"I do have a mind of my own, you know." Hyde piped up.

"Not if you want to live, you don't."

Suddenly, a robot from the Khave Ruins jumped out but I killed him with a single spell before he got a chance to even say anything.

"Now I would like to apologise for referring to the vein as a separate person." Lassi whimpered from behind Hyde.

"Apology accepted even though it wasn't truly meant."

Now everyone was unwillingly friends again, we walked together to the Crashed Rocket Fields (for that's where the path went and we were too lazy to try and off-road to any other destination). They were called the Crashed Rocket Fields because that's where we landed and, from what I knew, there wasn't another name for them.

"Oh, great. Back here. Now what?" Hyde groaned.

"Why don't we follow the pipes that have now started glowing from the energy at The Land Where The Stars Sleep?" I suggested. "That way, it will lead us to the rocket that King Gorgonzola told us about. If we follow the energy, we will soon reach the thing that needs energising which is, in this case, the rocket."

Hyde and Lassi blinked at me but we all followed the pipes that lead us to…

"God dangit, not this place again!" I scowled, realising the pipes lead us to the Khave Ruins which happened to be the most mind-numbingly boring place on the whole nothing-but-dust-and-moles planet. "Why did the pipes lead us here? Even though my theory was 100% correct, I still blame myself for this."

"Yeah I blame you too." Lassi frowned.

We strode in, again, expecting swarms of robots, again, but were surprised when we were greeted with nothing.

"I know I shouldn't be but I'm disappointed." Lassi muttered.

We went to the next floor but this time, there was someone guarding it.

"It's that damn red robot who attacked us last time!" Lassi and I whisper-yelled at the same time.

"I've never been here before. What's going on?" Hyde asked us.

"If he catches you, he zaps you." Lassi explained.

"He's a little pain in the arse too." I added.

He heard our voices, charged his knuckles and started zipping about.

"Let's all just run at the same time and pray." I suggested.

Lassi and Hyde nodded and we did just that. It worked surprisingly well and we were soon in the lift, heading for the top floor.

"I can't believe that worked." Hyde shook his head at me.

"Well it did so stop complaining."

Luckily, the robots couldn't be bothered to even try to lock entry to the top floor but they had, unfortunately, hired a massive security robot to stand in front of it.

"Oh look, it's Terence the Second." Hyde mused, happily.

"That's not a good thing. That rocket is our ticket off this rock." Lassi growled.

"We better duff him up." I nodded at them. They nodded so we walked up to him, dead casual, and just started hitting him over and over with our spells.

Poor Terence the Second never stood a chance.

We all climbed into the rocket. Lights flashed everywhere and there was even a little silver robot stood in the corner.

The three of us walked towards the control board.

"Press any key to continue." I read. I started to scour the keyboard. "There's no Any key on here!"

"Maybe we shouldn't do this." Hyde said as Lassi nudged me out of the way. "These Erd rockets are dangerous. Aunty Pam lost her third husband after one flung him 50ft in the air."

"Well, we can beat that!" I exclaimed.

"No seriously. These robots are awful builders."

"Hey!" Lassi interjected. "Mokka's great grandad could've built some of these rockets!"

"Well he didn't do a very good job, did he?" I replied.

Lassi shrugged.

"I'm sure this won't fling us 50ft into the air, mid flight." She pressed some buttons and the rocket began to tremble.

I suddenly felt very excited about going into space again.

"Drive it like you've stolen it!" I told her, wanting to go really fast this time.

"We HAVE stolen it." Hyde pointed out.

My smile disappeared.

"Will you calm down? Everything will be fine." I reassured him. "Now lets go!" My grin returned.

I felt him cling onto my hand and I held his tightly. I smiled at him again until he smiled back. The rocket began to move and to my delight, we sped off into space, faster than I could've imagined...

* * *

I know I only just updated but I really wanted to write . if anyone has any ideas for some oneshots to keep me occupied, just tell me. I do whatever really, POVs and stuff like that :) thanks for reading! Bye!


	7. In which we meet Otters and Sex Gods

Updating…again. But I'm starting to get into the good part of the story when they're not all just hanging around the school or random moles pop up everywhere. Also, automatic teller machine/TurtleFish91 drew Arsenic so you can have a look at that on her Deviantart (it's really good! Check it out-face!)

* * *

"You have arrived at your destination." Came a robot voice.

"What the balls was that?" I shouted, startled awake. We'd gotten some sleep in the cabins below the rocket. I crept over to Hyde's bed which was next to mine. "Wake up, there's a murderer in the rocket and he's going to kill us!" I whispered.

"I'm sure there's not." He muttered, eyes closed.

"But I heard him! He said we'd arrived at our destination."

"Yeah and that was probably the auto-pilot."

"That's just what he wants you to think. In reality- since when have we had auto-pilot?" I asked.

"Since when we left the rocket on auto-pilot over night."

"Ok then it probably was that but when did we use that?"

Hyde opened one eye.

"You were there when we turned it on. It was your suggestion to use it!"

"Oh, yeah." I remembered it now. Then, I'd seen the beds when I'd fallen down the stairs. Then, Lassi complained that the rocket smelled of Erd so I lied and said I'd cleaned it whilst everyone was asleep.

I looked down at Hyde but he was asleep so I shook him awake again.

"Hyde?"

"What now?"

"We've arrived at our destination."

He gave me a very dark look for a light mage and hauled himself out of bed.

"Lassi, we're here." He called out to her as he fixed his hair. Soon it was standing up, as normal.

I went upstairs and looked around the rocket a bit more. It had so much stuff. There was a clock on the wall so you could see what time it was and there was a broken clock next to it so you could see what time it wasn't. There were lights flashing about and beeping noises.

There was a massive sphere in the middle that was glowing colourfully and made a buzzing noise when you touched it.

The whole rocket seemed alive.

It looked excellent. If you looked at it again, it looked twice as excellent. But if you looked at it three times, it was still only twice as excellent which just goes to show that things can get boring if you look at them too much.

"What are you doing?" Hyde asked as he walked up the ladder.

"Just having a look around this rocket. And it hasn't killed us yet so I think we'll be ok."

He rolled his eyes at me.

"C'mon, let's go have a look outside at this wind planet then."

We stepped outside. I knew what I was expecting. Long plains with the occasional spindly tree. Massive breezes that swept you away. Maybe even some quicksand dotted about. Little animals scurrying about and birds singing in the breeze.

When we got out, I nearly went toppling into some water that I was pretty sure wasn't meant to be there.

Instead of everything I decided would be there, bits of ice bobbing about in a vast sea. Land was quite far away seeing as our rocket was floating in the water whilst Hyde and I were floating precariously on a block of ice.

"I don't think we're on the wind planet."

"You think?" Hyde frowned at me before shivering. "It's freezing. This must be Cassia, Gorgonzola said it had gone all frozen."

"This is the Ewok planet!" I cried in happiness.

I'd always loved the Ewoks. I hadn't paid attention to anything else when Hyde showed me the films. I just grinned when the Ewoks appeared.

Jabba the Hut, on the other hand, terrified me to the point where I was pretty much sitting on Hyde's lap out of pure fear.

"That was the best movie ever." He winked at me when I reminded him.

I just looked away. He was such a flirt, honestly. Whenever we were alone, all he'd do was hit on me. At first I thought he was jerk but he was quite nice after a while, and he was my brother's best friend too so he couldn't be that bad.

Even if the two of them were the biggest sluts I knew.

"How the hell did we get here?" He frowned stepping closer to me and putting his arm around my waist.

"Probably the auto-pilot. After all, we'd only just found this rocket and then we just left it to go wherever it wanted."

"I blame myself." He sighed.

"I blame you too."

"Hellooooooo Puff- oh." Lassi cries before frowning at her surroundings. "I didn't think Puffoon would look like this to be honest."

"I think we're on Cassia. But in other words, we're trapped on this little iceberg with no way to get off." Hyde told her.

"Hm." Lassi appeared to be in deep thought before she started to chant.

Oh no. She wouldn't. Not when we were on a fragile piece of ice.

The wind started to pick up getting faster and faster and faster still.

She done did it. Lassi was going to kill us all.

The ice started to wobble, already unsteady. Hyde grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him. I was a bit mad at him for flirting but I held him anyway.

I shut my eyes and hopes for the wobbling to be over before I threw up all over Hyde. I'd never live that down.

"Arsenic! Arsenic!" Came Hyde's voice.

Oh great. I was stuck with him my whole afterlife.

"Whaaaaaaaat?" I groaned. "I'm dead now and you still feel the need to annoy me?"

"We're alive. We didn't die." He replied, sounding slightly hurt.

Well that was something, I suppose. I looked up to see a long, icy path stretching out towards land.

"Oh." I said. "Well, that's good…What do we do?"

"Well we can't exactly use the rocket." Lassi frowned. We all turned to the rocket which was still bobbing up and down in the water.

"I don't think that's good for it, you know." I shook my head slightly.

"You don't say." Hyde muttered.

"I know! Lets have a look around this place and see if we can find anyone who can help us!" Lassi suggested.

Hyde and I looked at each other. I could tell he didn't really want to go randomly walking off on this iceberg and I think he could tell that I didn't either.

"Lassi what if the people here are cannibals?" I shouted. "We can't just go wandering off as we please!"

Lassi thought for a moment.

"Well, do you have any other ideas that will repair the rocket and get us to Puffoon?"

"…Yeah. Tons."

Lassi rolled her eyes and started to walk away.

"Where are you going?" Hyde shouted after her. "Come back!"

We ran off after her and found her staring at another Will-o-Wisp rocket.

"Hey! This rocket looks familiar, don't you think?" She smiled.

What the- How could she have forgotten already? IT WAS THREE DAYS AGO.

"It does now you mention it." Hyde added, thoughtfully.

I AM SO DONE.

"It's a rocket from the acadmeny, you brain donors!" I shouted. "You know, Will-o-Wisp! Or have you completely forgotten about that too?"

"Oh yeah!" They both chorused.

I've said it once and I'll say it again.

Miss Madeline is screwed.

"Wait!" Lassi suddenly shrieked. "If an academy rocket is here, someone must have flown it here!"

There were so many things I could have said to that but I just stayed silent.

"Really?" Hyde sighed, next to me.

"Yeah! And it must be someone from the academy!"

Oh. She did have a point after all. I wasn't expecting that, actually.

"But who?" I frowned.

Please let it be Pico, please let it be Pico.

We carried on walking through the icy fields, occasionally getting attacked by moss or coral and stuff like that. It was old news now; we just fought it off and that was that.

I really hoped it was Pico who was here. After I'd landed on Erd, I hadn't seen him for three whole days. It was the longest we'd been apart since we were ten.

Knowing my luck, Sorbet would be here and start ordering everyone about, left, right and centre. Then she'd go making my brother love her (which unsurprisingly annoys me to no end) and then they'll get married and I'll be stuck with Sorbet as my sister in law forever until I kill her with a ladder and get arrested.

"Arsenic," Lassi told me sternly. "There will be no killing Sorbet with a ladder. I will not let that happen. Not on my watch."

"Oh, just defending your new best friend, Sorbet, are we?" I scowled.

"Using 'are we' after a fact to make it passive aggressive, are we?" She retaliated, walking away.

"Strutting like a rabid smurf, are we?"

Lassi stormed back over.

"Gots bits of coral and moss in our hair…have we?" Lassi argued.

"Getting 'are we' wrong and saying 'have we' instead of 'are we', are we?" I smirked back.

I won.

"Guys!" Hyde suddenly shouted. He must've been feeling brave because no one normally interrupts mine and Lassi's arguments. Even Pico clears off when they start. "Look!"

We both turned to see where he was pointing. Upon a ledge, was a brown pile of something. It was partially covered in snow so I couldn't see what it was at first.

Upon closer inspection, it was a brown metal. I took a few steps closer before letting out a gasp once I realised what -or who- it was.

"Mokka!" I shrieked. I ran over and knelt beside him. "Who the hell stole your head?!" I cried once I realised his head was missing.

"Are we sure it's him?" Lassi squeaked. "It's not like Mokka to not have a head."

I heard Hyde tut and I turned round to her.

"Just because he has a lack of a head, doesn't mean it isn't him! Someone has stolen it!"

"Who would want Mokka's head? Who would go to any trouble of any kind for Mokka's head?" Hyde complained behind me.

"That's rude, how would you like it of I said I wouldn't steal your head?"

"A lot of gratitude actually." He replied to me.

I rolled my eyes and continued to try and revive him by rubbing his back pointlessly.

"C'mon!" Lassi cried. "Lets go find us a head!"

She dragged us off towards a gate in front of us.

"Lassi, may I ask where we're going?" Hyde asked.

"Yes you may!" She shouted back. She had me by the scruff of my neck and had more strength than I had anticipated.

Some silence went by as she continued. She wasn't going very fast. Mine and Hyde's ankles were dragging in the snow, leaving trails.

"Go on then." Lassi scowled at him.

"Oh right." Hyde apologised, whilst giving me a confused look. "Lassi, where are we going?"

"To save Mokka's head OBVIOUSLY! We can't leave him there headless for the rest of time!"

Well we could. He wouldn't exactly be coming after us to tell us off.

Lassi dragged us off to a large pink gate. An otter was stood next to it.

"W-Welcome to Port Pescato! T-The best port in Cassia!" He grinned.

I looked past him to see shivering otters wandering about. All the houses were freezing over as well. It didn't look that good.

"I take it it's the only port on Cassia?" I asked.

"Well…yes." He frowned. I shook free of Lassi and wandered into the town of my own accord.

We wandered about, a little lost. I decided to go into a random shell house, mainly out of curiosity to see what they were like inside.

"Hello! Welcome to the B and M mart!"

Oh, it was a shop. I moseyed about doing the 'wrong shop walk' which is basically the walk you do when you go into a shop, but it's not what you expected it to be like, but you can't just leave because that would be rude so you just walk around, pretending to be interested before hurrying out.

"Hey, Arsenic!" Lassi hissed. "Look at that! They're selling elephants made out of ivory. That's messed up. That would be like if I cut down a tree and made loads of little trees out of the wood."

"No." I replied, shaking my head at her. "That would be like if I killed you, tugged out all of your teeth and made a bunch of little models of you out of them."

Lassi laughed.

"You don't need to kill me to take out my teeth!"

I laughed too.

"Yeah…I know." I stopped laughing.

"So why did Lassi storm out of the shop?" Hyde asked me a few seconds later.

We'd just stepped out and the cold air hit us like the rap of a whip.

"Basically, I broke the first rule of friendship which is 'Don't kill your friends' and its generally the most important rule." I replied.

We found Lassi outside a random house at the far end of town. She was sat on the floor, in an obvious pout.

"Lassi? I'm sorry I threatened to kill you. And pull your teeth out." I apologised, not meaning a word of it.

"And?" She shouted.

"And for saying your angry walk looks like a three year old modelling for child Gap."

"And?" She repeated, louder.

"That was it, actually."

"Yes, it was. I got carried away, sorry about that." She smiled. "Anyway, I've heard this guy is a story teller and knows everything about Cassia and all the other planets too. Maybe he'll know how to get to Puffoon."

I nodded, looking at Hyde.

"Worth a shot." He agreed. We went inside and found a small otter, sat around a bunch of chicks.

"Gather round, gather round!" He sang. "I know all about the stories in this town!"

"That's lovely. What do you know about Cassia then? Anything good?" Hyde asked.

"The seas of Cassia are created out of Methane!" He exclaimed as if it was something completely amazing.

"Isn't this the Ewok planet? Hyde! We can throw Ewoks into seas of fart!" I gasped, shaking his arm.

He patted my head in a patronising way.

"If you're a good girl you can." He smirked. Rude beast. "Besides, I think only otters live here. No Ewoks to be found, even if there is a small difference between Ewoks and otters."

That was true but I wasn't going to admit it. We left the weirdo-chicken-story-man and traipsed around aimlessly but that's when we saw him.

"Lassi!" I whispered, tugging on thy arm. "Look! There is a sex god right over there!"

"Where?" She yelled, looking around wildly before also seeing him. "Oh my stars…"

He had tight clothing and black swishy hair. He had big purple eyes and a wonderful smile.

"Quick, lets infiltrate the area." I nodded. She looked at me, confused. "Steal him whilst no one's looking! I thought we were on the same wavelength."

Suddenly, there was a yelling from a female otter that was also fawning over the Sex God, resulting in another (possibly homosexual, seeing as it was male) otter running off in tears.

"Maybe we should see what's up with him?" Hyde asked, watching the otter running into his house, presumably.

"Why would we do that? What does that possibly accomplish in our quest to rescue Miss Madeline or our side quest to save Mokka's head?" Lassi replied, still shamelessly staring at the Sex God with me.

"How does stalking him solves anything either?"

"He is merely a distraction in our day to day lives. Anyway, if there was a hot woman over there, you'd be staring at her too." I retaliated.

Lassi and I jumped up and walked over to the Sex God. The otter woman was still vying for his attention whilst he looked like he really wanted to leave.

I pushed the woman over, who went sprawling into some coral.

"Oh, hello, ladies." He smiled, not even bothered we just nearly killed someone. "How can I help you?"

"Oooooh!" Lassi and I grinned at each other.

"Honestly." Hyde tutted from far away. He was probably embarrassed to be seen with us again.

"Who are you?" I asked him.

"I'm Detective Beignet, from the Space Police." He smiled, making us go jellified. "I'm currently here protecting these villagers from monsters on Tangerine Beach."

"…You are lovely." I told him.

"Erm, thank you." He looked uncomfortable. "C-Can I help you with something?"

"Yes, you can!" Lassi grinned, practically rubbing herself on him.

"Oh God, Lassi have some pride!" I shouted. "Or you'll end up like Coral-Face over there!"

"Help me!" She shouted back.

"NO!" We yelled before grabbing one of Biegnet's arms each.

"He's ours." Lassi growled.

Beignet, on the other hand, looked like he was crying silent tears. Which he probably was.

This was when Hyde pulled us away from Beignet (who looked so grateful he may have possibly proposed to Hyde there and then).

"What's all this fuss with the otters? That one was crying."

"We'll a number of items have been stolen here but I'm having no part in it. It's outside of my jurisdiction."

"So? You're a member of the Space Police. Sort it out!" Hyde scowled.

"I would, sir, but as I said its outside of my jurisdiction. They can go to Puffoon and make an official complaint but otherwise, they'll have to sort it themselves."

"Outside of my jurisdiction, my arse!" I shouted suddenly, causing people to look over in confusion. "I have lost a lot of respect for you, Detective Sex-God-I mean-Biegnet. But you're still lovely."

"Since when was that his nickname?" Lassi whispered.

"I don't know. I'm a bit confused right now." I replied.

"What sort of officer are you to ignore people in need?!" Hyde shouted.

"Unless they make an official complaint, it's not my duty to sort it!" Beignet yelled back.

"So?! A true officer's duty is to protect his people! If you can't do that, what sort of officer are you?!"

"Is anyone else finding this totally erotic?" I asked Lassi and the small crowd of otters that had gathered. "Just me? Ok, that's fine."

"Look, Mr True-Officer-Justice!" Beignet shouted back, creating a great new nickname for Hyde, "If you want to try to help these people, be my guest! But I am having no part in it!"

"I'm not surprised seeing as you're probably just SCARED."

"…I am not scared. I am just doing my duty without getting mixed up in a pathetic town drama-"

"Cowardly, cowardly custard. Can't cut the mustard." Lassi and I started singing, before we realised we were. We looked at each other with confused faces yet continued.

Soon all the other otters joined in.

"You know, I am /this close/ to just letting all the monsters eat you!" Beignet threatened.

"Oh nooooooo!" The otters all wailed before ruining off. "Oh waily, waily, waily…"

"Well, we're going to help the people. At least someone will be." Hyde spat before storming off.

Lassi and I followed suit before running back to Beignet.

"Last look!" We chorused, eying him up and down. "Phwoooooar!" Then we ran away again.

"What was all that then?" I asked Hyde.

"I just…I don't like officers who find excuses to not help their people." He sighed. Hyde was actually walking quite fast, to the point where I was running to keep up. I kept falling behind and would have to speed up again.

Lassi was just dawdling along behind us.

"Do you want to talk about why that is?" I asked.

Hyde looked behind at Lassi who was talking to an otter. "Later."

I nodded. I had a feeling that he was going to tell me about his past. I could tell from the anger in his face when he was shouting at Beignet and the sadness in his eyes now, at just me mentioning it.

"Apparently," Lassi shouted, falling over in the snow and getting up again. "There's a Hermit Lab nicking everything."

"What the dickens is a Hermit Lab?"

"I have no idea." She told me. "Lets talk to that otter who was crying."

We walked over to this house, which was handy because we were relatively close to it.

"It's really, really cold." I complained to Hyde and Lassi as I opened the door. "Oh…now it's really warm."

We strolled over to the otter, who was stood by his furnace, minding his own business.

"Excuse me, Mr Otter-Who-May-Or-May-Not-Have-A-Sexual-Attraction- To Detective-Beignet, we'd like to ask you some things about the disappearances around town-" I started.

"Arsenic! Look!" Lassi pointed to the top of the furnace.

And, as if it was surveying the house, was Mokka's head.

What in the name of Hitler's knickers and matching bra was that doing there?!

"Yeah, well I'm busy." The murderous otter complained.

"Excuse me, Mr Otter-Who-May-Or-May-Not-Have-A-Sexual-Attraction- To-Detective-Beignet, I would like to enquire why our friend's head is sat upon your furnace like it owns the place?"

"You what?" He shouted. "Look I have no time for these immature japes-"

It was at this point that Lassi jumped him.

"Give us Mokka's head!"

"Who's Mokka?!"

"The person who's head you've stolen!" Lassi shrieked.

"Quick Lassi, bite him!" I shouted at her.

"There will be no biting!" Hyde commanded, tearing Lassi off the phantom head-snatcher.

"What's going on?!" He cried, looking close to tears again.

"Hyde, I would like to beat this crafty lekka senseless so if you could put him down, it would be much appreciated." I told him.

"There will be no beating senseless. Let him explain himself before you rip his head off and do some sort of tribal killing." Hyde told him.

Honestly, he was definitely the most boring person in the world.

"I stole no one's head! That is my furnace battery." The otter cried.

"Well, Mr Otter-Who-May-Or-"

"Actually my name is Mick."

I glared at him for a few seconds.

"Mr Otter-Who-May-Or-May-Not-Have-A-Sexual-Attraction- To-Detective-Beignet, I must inform you that your furnace battery is actually our friend's head and we would quite like it back, thank you please thank you much to you."

"Well…my other batteries are in my toolbox and the key is missing…"

"Arsenic!" Lassi exclaimed. She pointed at a shell that was sat by the door.

"Unless you haven't noticed, every building is a shell on this stupid planet. There are bound to be lots of them." I replied, before turning round.

"…and I don't want to say any names…"

Lassi tapped my shoulder and I ignored her.

"But it was definitely the hermit lab! No doubt!"

Lassi grabbed me and I was about to punch her but I saw the shell moving. It went into Mick's wardrobe, pulled out a pair of underpants and legged it out again.

Lassi and I looked at each other in equal surprise.

"So I'll give you the battery if you get my key back."

"I don't want to worry you, Mr Mick-Who-Loves-Beignet, but a shell just stole some of your underpants." Lassi told him, getting the name wrong.

"WHAT?! Oh no…I am in so much trouble…"

"That does not make sense unless there was something incriminating in your knickers-" I started.

"Don't worry! We'll get your underpants back!" Hyde smiled, heroically.

"Actually, I was more concerned over my toolbox key-"

"We'll you needn't worry another minute about your underpants. We'll find them!" Lassi declared before we ran out of the house, after the shell creature.

* * *

So this was a really long chapter. Also, thanks to everyone who reads my oneshots, the new chapter will be up soon :D

~GeorgieSusoWasSuarez x


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